Travel Blog

Kitchen Confidential returned to the bestseller list after the death of Anthony Bourdain. How nice if it were now joined by A House for Mr. Biswas.

I thank Trump for my increased bookishness. In a library - unlike in a newspaper or magazine - you can go years without coming across his name.

I’ve been on a memoir kick: Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, Amos Oz’s A Tale of Love and Darkness, Jeanette Winterson’s Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? and now Richard Blanco’s The Prince of Los Cocuyos. (If it seems like a random collection it’s because I found them all in the memoir section of Big Apple Books on Federal Highway.) As enjoyable as learning about other lives has been discovering different places: Iran, Israel, northern England, southern Miami.

I am enjoying Amos Oz's memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness, despite the fact that I am not that interested in stories of childhood and the author is only eight on page 287.

Writers love bookstores. Really? All those tables without our books on them? All those magazines without our stories in them?

I'm off for a week (not to Russia, though I'll be watching the World Cup while I travel). Back here on the 25th.

Friday everybody else's comments were so insightful, and mine were so trite, that I was almost glad that it was the last book club meeting of the season.