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 bookstore’s personality is evident from the moment I reach its door. Just outside of it, a lovely red glass case stores a few books for a lending library. Across its main window, a quote by Hemingway proclaims: You write for yourself, and for others. This is a bookstore for writers (they come and talk regularly), and for readers: for all-season readers, and for summer readers who enjoy a long book after a long hike.

In its literature section, the myriad of detailed hand-written notes give pause at first: where to start? But soon recognition sets in, and the shelves start to look like a friend’s bookshelves… a friend to whom we would have lent a few of our favorite books. Often, the notes are precise, personal – they have a tone; they are a good read in and of themselves.Sometimes, they are just an excerpt of a review. Or a simple “recommend” in bold letters (that was for Camus…).

After noting that the book I am hunting for (Michel Tournier’s Midnight Love Feast) has not magically appeared here, I notice that I come back over and over again to the same note.

Time to chat with the owner,  Jody Swanson, and ask her if she is the author of the note I keep being drawn to, reading it several times. It mentions an author I have never heard about, Lydia Davis – but soon our conversation makes me recognize her as the most recent translator of Proust and, I am told, now a translator of Flaubert as well. That, clearly, is a recommendation for me. After all, in my sedentary life, I teach and breathe French literature.

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis become quite irresistible as I take the book in my hand. It has a tactile feel reminiscent of vintage publications: soft paper, irregular edges. As I turn the pages, I discover that some stories are a few pages long; others, a few lines long – puzzling, funny, completely unexpected. She is unique, and sometimes quite strange – this is said with such delight that I have to take the book with me, and promptly walk to the end of the street for a short read on the beach.

At the end of the street, good space to read

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