I love malls, not so much for shopping – I can’t remember the last time I bought anything other than food in one – but for people-watching and picture-taking. In South Florida we are blessed with two of the nation’s most successful malls: Sawgrass Mills and Aventura Mall. I rarely enter the first; I sit with a book on a bench outside and watch the parade of nations pass by. Aventura boasts one of the best food halls in the region and, since the summer, a delightfully unconventional bookstore.
Unlike Sawgrass’s Books-A-Million, Quade Books is a small, bright, extremely well-curated space. It sits next to the Apple store on the second level; you walk under the food court to get to it. And there you find books in English and Spanish, not in separate sections, but on the same wall, in the same genre. It is an interesting approach, and one perfectly reflective of our bilingual home. On one shelf you can find Leslie Jamison in English and on another Eduardo Galeano in Spanish. There are also romance novels, with their bright covers, and a large section of children’s books. It is a wonderful addition to the mall, a place where I will actually buy something.
I’ve been dipping into Joan Reardon’s Poet of the Appetites: The Life and Loves of M.F.K. Fisher, specifically the section about her time in Aix-en-Provence. She rented a room in a kind of boarding house where, during the meals, the other women would question her ability to write with any understanding about French cuisine. They called her, derisively, la californienne.
There is a moment in Jonathan Raban’s memoir Father and Son – which describes his recovery from a stroke – in which his physical therapist announces that she’s going on a cruise. Ever the literary man, Raban gives her David Foster Wallace’s essay “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” somehow not realizing that it is like giving Deliverance to someone planning a camping trip.
October is Polish American Heritage Month and I have been using that peg to try to set up readings of my memoir at bookstores, a few of which boast of their support of the marginalized and the underrepresented. In American publishing, few groups are as poorly represented as the Poles. Yet I am finding that not all marginalized groups are equal; some, in fact, are not even regarded as marginalized.
Eric Weiner spoke at Books & Books last night about his new book, Ben & Me, an unconventional biography of Benjamin Franklin. Each chapter title consists of an adjective followed by the word “Ben”: “Resting Ben” “Bookish Ben” “Wandering Ben”. For Miami, Eric read from the chapter “Naked Ben.”
Eight people came to Books & Books in the Grove last night to hear my conversation with the traveler and publisher Hilary Bradt. Admittedly, we had stiff competition: Sebastian Junger was over at the Gables store. But Hilary, a charming octogenarian, has also had an adventurous life, one that his included hitchhiking – as she told the audience – in every decade except the first. Her article about her most recent experience, in Germany, appeared in the Guardian.
After the event, over bowls of French onion soup at Le Bouchon, I told Hilary that travel writing is not as popular in the U.S. as it is in Britain. And not just Britain. She said she did an event in Belgium that 60 people attended. And 40 of them bought her book, which of course is written in a language not native to the country.