I just saw the first episode of season 2 of Downton Abbey and saw that the cowardly Moseley gave the loyal Anna a copy of “Elizabeth and her German Garden” by Elizabeth von Arnim. I first read Elizabeth von Arnim because an Italian friend suggested I read “All the Dogs of my Life,” her very tart and very merry memoir. Then I got to write the introduction to the New York Review Books edition of “The Enchanted April,” a book to read over and over. Especially when it’s raining. Flowers, Positano…

Let’s see…it first came out in 1983…so Alice would be how old now? Nevermind…she’s still nineteen!

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.

I am reading Otto Friedrich’s book on Glenn Gould. I am listening to the Goldberg Variations. There are advantages to not being able to fall asleep.

I met Ron Charles the Washington Post book reviewer at a wonderful Pen/Faulkner event. He introduce the panel (Elinor Lipman, who read a chapter from a work in progress that was stunningly good, Stephen MacCauley whose novel Insignificant Others I am now reading and loving and me who needs to lose 25 pounds). Ron Charles is hilarious. These video book reviews/parodies are truly sublime. Who said the art of criticism is lost? Enjoy.

Hector the cairn terrier seems to have done an interview for Writers on Writing with Marrie Stone on the Irvine public radio station. You will hear his dulcet tones and profound insights a little after the halfway mark.
http://penonfire.blogspot.com/2011/02/susan-maushart-cathleen-schine.html