As I walked back from communion yesterday, a man I know moved to the end of his pew and handed me a folded pair of pages that had been stapled together. Opening them up, I saw that they were copies he'd made of the introduction to a selection of passages from Charles M. Doughty's Arabia Deserta.
And people wonder why I like Miami.
One advantage of publishing every dozen years is that each new book feels a bit like your first.
I was puzzled when Barnes & Noble started devoting space in the middle of their stores to the Nook, a device that, if successful, would cause the demise of those stores.
But I was even more confused yesterday when I walked into the Barnes & Noble in Boca Raton and saw, just in front of the Nook display, a collection of LPs under the word VINYL. Is it now acceptable to listen to music - but not read books - the way we did in the 20th century? Or will I find, the next time I walk into a Barnes & Noble, a section of scrolls?
I was sipping an ouzo at the Greek Festival yesterday when my friend Joe, after taking a swig of Mythos beer, asked if I'd seen the trailer to the new Jennifer Lopez movie, The Boy Next Door. In it, Lopez plays a high school teacher who has an affair with a much younger man.
"He gives her a first edition copy of The Iliad," Joe said, then roared with laughter. "He tells her he got it for a buck at a garage sale." (More howls.) "So nobody involved in the making of the movie has any idea how old The Iliad is. I'm so glad I got to say that at a Greek Festival."
Taking a breath, Joe said: "If I get my hands on a first edition of The Iliad I'm not giving it to anybody - I don't care how attractive she is."
"These are comic pieces," Richard Ford said Saturday at the Miami Book Fair International, before reading from his new book, Let Me Be Frank. Then he immediately expressed his belief that "if nothing is humorous then nothing is serious."
The New York Times' double dose of Donald Antrim - a review in the book review and a profile in the magazine - gave me the name of yet another contemporary novelist I need to feel bad about not having read.