A place to get lost in
My idea of a bookshop or library to get lost in ... though not exclusively. I also love some of...
When did you begin?
Recently I read an old penny-paperback of The Grapes of Wrath. I was about three-quarters of the way through when...
How to build a library … Alexandrian style
The Library of Alexandria had 30-50 state-funded scholars and agents scouring the Mediterranean for new books. It's believed that...
The Saturday of Libraries
When we moved to the town of Nyon, I joined the municipal library. The building itself is worth writing about...
A visit to the Brontes
When I read the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth I had a yearning to visit the Wordsworth homes in the Lake...
Book as mirror II
One of the most reassuring and surprising insights I found in reading Harold Bloom's literary criticism, was the realization that...
A bookshop in Chicago – Open Books
In preparing our trip to Chicago we looked up the 'ten best' bookshops in the city. Most proved too far,...
Visit to the Leeds Library
By luck, a short visit to Leeds coincided with a monthly guided tour of the Leeds Library, one of the...
Pencil and paper
Steinbeck wrote with pencil on the ubiquitous American yellow pad. Computers and word-processing came too late for him, and so...
Of centuries and cows
These quirky comments by Steinbeck charmed me - first his reaction to the first room he chose to work in,...
A wilderness of books
This vast languishing resource was first brought home to me in Erik Reinert's How Rich Countries Got Rich ... and...
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