In the New Yorker...

[Front-Ranger]

I forgot to mention that almost everybody in the store, including me, was wearing a mask.

[Jeff Wrangler]

I went out today to a bookstore that is 10 miles away! Not very environmentally correct of me but it's getting so good bookstores are few and far between. At least I didn't order on Amazon.

Why is this environmentally incorrect? 

[Front-Ranger]

To get in my car and travel such a long way just to buy a book. I should have taken a bus or a train but public transit is very inadequate where I live.

[Front-Ranger]

It's an archival issue this week around the theme of food. I don't mind an archival issue but I've read three of the articles already and remember them. 

[serious crayons]

I went out today to a bookstore that is 10 miles away! Not very environmentally correct of me but it's getting so good bookstores are few and far between. At least I didn't order on Amazon.

The Tattered Cover is still there, I hope??

I confess to the evil deed of ordering things on Amazon, just because it's so easy. My Kindle hasn't worked with my new wifi, so I haven't ordered anything lately, but I'm getting one of those huge new iPhones in a day or two, which may be big enough to read a book comfortably.

You can also by ebooks from Barnes & Noble. I haven't heard of them doing anything evil.

But another option is to get the digital version from the library. At least a couple of people I know have library memberships in several cities so if a book is popular (as I'm sure that one is, for example, given the good reviews) you can get on numerous waiting lists and borrow it from a library anywhere. As I understand it, at least -- I haven't actually tried it yet.

I found the book Real Estate by Deborah :Levy, which was reviewed in TNY a couple of weeks ago. Started it and like it well. I forgot I don't usually like autobiographies, but this one seems okay so far. Not too self-absorbed.

I wonder what she considers the difference between autobiography and memoir. Memoirs are among my favorite genres. I don't think of them as self-absorbed; the good ones read like novels that happen to be about real people and their real lives.

I just started reading The Yellow House, a memoir by Sarah M. Broom. It's about her family's house in New Orleans and involves Katrina, so it's especially interesting to me and timely now.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-yellow-house-sarah-broom/1129761250?ean=9780802149039

One thing Amazon has over B&N is its "look inside the book" and "send a sample" features.

[Front-Ranger]

The Tattered Cover is still there, I hope??

Yes, that's where I went. It has changed hands recently, so everybody is crossing their fingers that it will continue its tradition of excellence.

I wonder what she considers the difference between autobiography and memoir. Memoirs are among my favorite genres. I don't think of them as self-absorbed; the good ones read like novels that happen to be about real people and their real lives.

I think of memoirs as looking back at a life and having perspective. An autobiography I think of as more of a diary.

[serious crayons]

I think of memoirs as looking back at a life and having perspective. An autobiography I think of as more of a diary.

That makes sense. An autobiography is a full historical account, which best befits a major public figure. I'm trying to think of what ones I've read; I rarely even read biographies. Whereas the subject of a memoir doesn't need to be famous, as it's all about the writing and the particular experience.

Glad the TC is OK for now!

[Jeff Wrangler]

Glad the TC is OK for now!

Me, too, though Heaven only knows if I'll ever get there again. 

[serious crayons]

Those really famous bookstores are cool. Powell's in Portland, Prairie Lights in Iowa City, Shakespeare & Co. in NYC. Also City Lights in San Francisco (which I haven't been to).

Minneapolis has bookstores but never the equivalent aside from maybe Louise Erdrich's Birchbark Books. Which I've been to only once -- when interviewing Louise.

[Front-Ranger]

Last year, I went to Shakespeare and Company in Paris, just across the Seine from Notre Dame. It was a fun place but I was slightly disappointed because I was hunting for books in French for my grandchildren. All their books are in English! Why go to Paris and buy books in English? At a different bookstore, I got a book on medieval France for my older grandson, a book on ballet for my granddaughter, and a book called "Ou est Charlie?" (exactly like "Where's Waldo?") for my grandson Charile.