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...
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,...
A writer’s reading room
During Easter in Aosta, I started reading a favourite writer, Patrick Leigh Fermor, beginning a two-volume treat, Mani and Roumeli. ...
A sunny spot to read
I fell in love with this room when I saw this sunlit painting. The Victorian artist has captured a perfect...
Librarian as satrap
Having known nothing but kindness among librarians, this striking description of a martinet guarding his books almost at the point...
Of boats and books
Another example of Steinbeck's search for a perfect writing spot, in different houses, places, times of his life, as described...
The perfect spot, finally
From the multiple versions described by his wife, it seems it took many years and experiments for John Steinbeck to...
A chapel for study – the reading room of the Oriental Institute
After a visit to the Oriental Institute museum in Chicago, I did a pit stop at...
A beautiful reading room
When visiting Leeds, my original university town, I decided to drop in on a few libraries, including the hulking Victorian...
Basilicata bibliomotocarro
Antonio La Cava, a retired school teacher, converted a quintessential Italian vehicle, the three-wheeler micro-van, into a travelling library.
For...
The Cemetery of Forgotten Books
The whole intricate plot of Ruiz Zafón's Shadow of the Wind begins with his father taking him to this labyrinthine...
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