Dog-eared | 9 June 2009

We went to San Francisco, walked obscene miles, and came home with a lot of books. We visited so many great places with all sorts of interesting things I could and couldn’t take home — obviously the antique/vintage/curiosity shops are much better stocked there — and mostly we just bought books.

The night before we left, one of my sisters articulated some ideas that I had been thinking about but shoving away, and they stuck to the philosophical cobwebs in my brain and made me think twice as I fondled and ogled and sighed. So much to want, so little to need — but somehow books are exempt.

I read more on this trip than I have in weeks — a whole play, a whole novel, and the start of another novel. The last is Pnin, by Nabokov, for whom I have a respectful fondness, so collected (collecting) several of his books but not quite attempted to read them — but Pnin, now, is a delight. I had no idea. Why is it so easy to forget that literature can truly be fun.

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Places to go: bookninja | eudaemonist | fine little day | fireland | ftrain | girls are pretty | interior stories | ivebeenreadinglately | maud newton | mimi smartypants | rhetorical device | sandra juto | simply breakfast | toastier | whygodwhy | wood s lot | & so