Hello and a happy new year to everyone. As the most feeble blogger on record, I feel it incumbent upon even me to check in once before the end of 2011 and to post some pictures of a few of the places I visited in 2010/2011, in all of which I met the most wonderful book sellers and book buyers and book readers and book writers. No one will be offended, I think, if I say that my favorite place was the isle of Capri. Do you remember in Blazing Saddles when Hedley Lamarr says to the the group of cigar smoking politicians, “We have to protect our phony baloney jobs, gentleman!”? Well, sometimes in Capri where I was honored to be a part of a lecture series called “Le Conversazione,” those words came to mind. So, thank you Anronio Monda and Davide Azzolini for dreaming up such a dreamy event. Above is the view from our window. And for those many, many months, years or decades or lifetimes when one cannot be on Capri, I highly recommend Extraordinary Women by Compton Mackenzie and South Wind by Norman Douglas. Below, left to right, a few more places: San Francisco from a Berkeley window; Tucson; Birthplace of Motown; the Watergate at dawn.

Dominique Browning, the world’s most gracious and generous book reviewer, is of course better known for her H&G columns; her book, Around the House and in the Garden, and now her new book, Slow Love Life. But you should also take a look at her new blog, slowlovelife.com: it’s like walking outside and breathing in the scent of lime trees!

I was in Acapulco before Christmas with some friends one of whom was wearing rolled up jeans, an untucked shirt and a cap on sideways and I said she looked like a kid from the Our Gang comedies, and she pulled out her phone and showed me this picture of herself taken when she was a kid:

This was our view:

It all seems so long ago…

There’s a great post by Gerald Dworkin in 3quarks daily of short funny philosophical comments. My favorite bit:

Jewish philosophy

S. Morgenbesser

click HERE for full post http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/11/short-takes.html#more

okay, okay…so I wrote marshal law instead of martial law. do you know what time it was when i wrote that? I was sleep-blogging. Anyway, for all you know, there is a very bossy person named Marshal who lays down the law here.
Today we had to vacuum and clean the bathrooms and iron the duvet cover and change the linens and push the swiffer around and take out all the trash before the “people” came to look at the apartment. Ironing pillowcases is very satisfying–swish, swish, that lovely smell of steam and starch, swish, fold, swish, fold again and you have this perfect square of percale. The duvet cover was more like a Marx Brothers movies.
When we escaped our housekeeping and went outside to the park, it was beautiful and overrun with twins in sporty strollers and toddlers toddling and children on their fathers’ shoulders kicking with their little Crocks. Enough bicycles to fill Copenhagen. And a 4-month old shnorkie (shnauzer yorkie) puppy bouncing across the street. My step-father said, “It’s like a parade out here. New York is always a parade.”

Last week I went to speak at the Scarsdale Women’s Club. Here’s a picture of the beautiful place:

(photo by susan farley for The New York Times)
And here is some of its history from an article about the club in the Times:
“Formed during World War I by women who were part of the suffragist movement, the club has a history of bringing together progressive women to promote philanthropy, community and culture, said Genevieve Johnson, a member of the club’s board.

The women subsequently used the profits from the paper, which the club sold about 40 years later, to help buy the Lang home as a clubhouse. It cost $84,000. They also ran a tearoom to help pay off the mortgage.”
(To read the full article click here)
My kind of ladies. And they were, too. And they served tea!

It’s been a while, but here is what I have to say:
I’m still reading Tristram Shandy. I have been reading Tristram Shandy for about fifteen years, but now I’m well into it. And still nothing has happened! But I just read a great passage on noses. There are many great passages on noses in Tristram Shandy!
I just got back from Norway and Copenhagen and, for a minute, Malmo in Sweden. I read the first volume of Kristin Lavransdottir. I saw puffins! And a lapland bunting. I also saw fjords and tiny red barns and tiny white houses in Norway. And a lot of babies that sit up very straight in their carriages in Copenhagen. How do they do that?
Here are some pictures that Janet took: