Quote de jour
"If you cannot enjoy reading a book over and over, there is no point reading it at all."
                                                                                                                             ~Oscar Wilde

This is a special edition of What I'm Reading This Week. There will be no blog next Sunday as I will be doing an imitation of a rotisserie chicken on a beach. I mostly post images of what I take out from the library as a visual reference for my own perverse joy of record keeping. I make no bones about being a huge library buff but I also buy books. Like most people, I frequent the vast mega booksellers like Barnes and Noble and other chains. When I'm lazy, I buy online from Amazon. There is no substitute for browsing in what I'd call a real book shop, not owned by a corporation but by real book lovers.  These bookshops are a dying breed but there are a few stragglers. If you live anywhere in the New York area and want a taste of this rare breed, head over to Riverrun Books in Hastings-on-Hudson in Westchester County.http://www.riverrunbookshop.com/ It's actually two shops across the street from each other. Both are a wabi sabi lovers dream. Wabi sabi, the Japanese esthetic beauty of all things worn, torn and cracked with age is one of my favorites themes to photograph. It's the same reason I love the patina of antiques. This is the store front of the regular used books (modestly priced good reading).

 
This is the sister shop with rare, out of print books and other collectibles. It's an Aladdin's cave of literary gems. Any book lover could easily spend an afternoon there in rapture. It's owned by a serious bookman Chis Stephens and his delightful wife Louisa. While chatting with Louisa, I realized there are two kinds of people in the world: those who love books and those who really love books.





Buying a book about my favorite river? $4.00. Reading about my neck of the woods? Priceless.



I'd be lying if I told you I won't miss my weekly stack of magazines. This was this week's stack including the now ubiquitous Obama on every cover. Enough already.

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Facebook's founder mark Zuckerberg is on the cover of Fortune magazine. He's a local boy from Dobbs Ferry. His dad is my former dentist. Must be something in the water here.
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I've packed a mountain of books in my suitcase. It's ridiculous carrying the extra weight but I refuse to buy a Kindle. Call me old fashioned, but I like turning pages of books made of paper and don't require batteries.

Shhh, don't tell my library but I'm taking a couple of library books on holiday including Carrie Fisher's heavily illustrated mini memoir titled: Wishful Drinking and...

I've heard good things about Elizabeth Lesser's latest offering Broken Open. It's not exactly a beach read but how much chick lit can one endure?

See you in a couple weeks...