Month: July 2016

July 26, 2016

Full stop: Portland

As I end this trip in Portland, the first obvious stop had to be Powell’s, the “city of books”. It keeps its promise of gigantism, complete with a colored-and-numbered coded…
July 25, 2016

Bookstore animals

I had read rumors of cats in the bookstores: a sign announced an “Attack Cat On Duty” at both Book Bin I visited, in Salem and Corvallis. Rose, the attack cat of…
July 24, 2016

My frontier for this trip

When I reached Prineville in the late afternoon, there was no bookstores to be seen, though there were books in one of the windows of the block-long “Neat Repeat” store….
July 23, 2016

A parenthesis… or not

When I left Klamath Falls this morning, the bookstore, Basin Book Traders, was still closed; a lone reader sat on the bench placed outside the strip-mall store. So, I thought, this…
July 22, 2016

Tournier spotting in Eugene

The table outside J Michaels Books, in downtown Eugene, looked promising (the anniversary edition of Eloise’s adventures!); the carefully curated collection inside confirms the promise. For the first time since I…
July 20, 2016

Incipit for a trip

So we start this book roamin’ at the margin of these United States: three blocks from the Pacific Ocean, at the Cloud and Leaf, in the small coastal town of Manzanita, Oregon. The…
July 17, 2016

Horizon: books

This is a love letter to independent bookstores, second-hand bookstores, bookstores with a point of view, and bookstores with a view – and to the readers who help them thrive. It is…