I do miss independent bookstores. But I’m also lucky because I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and the Barnes and Nobles up here are awfully good ones. Still, a person misses a person’s local little bookstore. And a person often ends up ordering books on line. Especially old out-of-print books. And a person sometimes guiltily orders used books that are still in print, thereby cheating the publisher and, much worse, the author!!! of royalties. SO! Now I have discovered a site at which you can order on line to your heart’s content, assuage your royalty guilt, and actually do some good in the world. It is called betterworld.com. They give part of their profits to literacy programs, they rescue books before they end up as landfill, they have free shipping and they also offer carbon-offset shipping. For example, I just ordered Author, Author by David Lodge and it cost me $3.75, free shipping, another 4 cents for the carbon offset shipping. I recently gave away about 100 books to make room for new ones, which is good because I foresee a lot of them appearing on my doorstep in the near future. Go to betterworld.com!

Midnight’s Children won the 2008 Booker of Bookers Prize.(click here) I was thinking of Midnight’s Children, on eof my most beloved novels, yesterday as I watched Ghandi on TV. Reading it, all those many years ago, was a revelation, not just about India, but about novels. Reading Rushdie for the first time was like reading Dickens for the first time: Look what you can do! I was also happy to see that Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda was on the list, although I think his other Booker winner, The True Adventures of the Kelly Gang, is perhaps even better. Carey was a recent discovery for me, and a thrilling one. The others on the short list were JM Coetzee’s Disgrace, Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road, Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist and J G Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur. None of which have I read. The shame of it. And the delight. Four new books! Four writers to experience for the first time!

Here is my friend the wonderful writer Ariel Levy on her brand new GREEN ROOF! Don’t you want a GREEN ROOF? I do. It provides excellent insulation and thereby saves energy and money; it helps with storm runoff and so keeps our oceans clean; you now get a tax credit in NYC that covers about 25% of the installation cost. And it’s BEAUTIFUL. This GREEN ROOF was designed and installed by Greensulate(click). I want it!
Warning: Ari not included.

We rented a mini-van and drove up to Hamilton, NY to pick up a Plycraft chair we bought on ebay and we took the lovely scenic Taconic Parkway. Unfortunately, part of the scenery, in among the wildflowers, was a surprising number of state policemen, one of whom surprised us indeed and gave us a ticket for going 82 in a 55mph zone. Hmmph. Here is a picture a disgusted Hector looking back at the absurdly garish flashing lights on this gentleman’s car.

And here is a similar chair. Ours is camel color.

We spent the night at a dog-friendly b&b in Morris, NY. I had never heard of Morris, NY. Why would I have, really? And I never would have gone there if we hadn’t needed a dog-friendly b&b. Buy I’m awfully glad we did. The Butternut Lodge is great. Here is a picture:

We got there after the one restaurant in town was closed, so we went to the ice cream place which also serves hot dogs. And Janet bravely went into the scary tavern and got two beers, so we had hot dogs, beer and delicious soft serve ice cream for dinner. A truly perfect cuisine. They also serve a dollop of vanilla with a milkbone in it for dogs. In the morning we had breakfast at the diner and ate delicious pancakes while men in caps and suspenders discussed feed for cows. I wish every furniture purchase were like this one.

I have been in Westport, CT, sniffing the air trying to discover the source of the most sublime June air, and I’ve narrowed it down to what I think are Locust Trees (thank you, Nancy) about which, wikipedia tells me, William Carlos Williams wrote a poem that I must now read,

as well as some bushes I don’t know the names of.

But there are no Linden Trees out here, and so I was sad. Then, I went back into the city for one night, Monday, June 23, and there it was: the cloud of blissful scent, the freshest essence of spring, the…Linden Trees in bloom!

When I got up to our apartment, there was an urgent phone message from our neighbor Murray alerting us to the glorious occurrence! Linden Tree Day! I think there ought to be naked people (nice looking young ones), cherubs and satyrs out dancing under stars to celebrate. Maybe next year. I’m glad I didn’t miss Linden Tree Day. And I’m glad to get old Salvador Dali off this blog. I bet even Salvador Dali is sick of looking at himself here. Onward and upward. A rare day in June.

Thank you, 3quarks daily! Yes, you give me poetry and essays about black holes, but you also give me this: click here!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXT2E9Ccc8A

I did a reading in San Francisco that was a fundraiser for a group called Rocketdog. Rocketdog takes older, less obviously adoptable dogs and finds homes for them. The Booksmith is one of the country’s few remaining independent bookstores. Her is a picture of my handsome, attentive, gracious Rocketdog host, Sinbad, in this wonderful bookstore.

A while ago Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote about Angela Thirkell in his column and I was jealous that he liked her so much because I had tried to read her stuff years ago and found it annoying and twee. But my friend Jeanette recently hunted up a bunch of the novels and passed them on to Janet and me and…they’re so good. One of the things I love that I could not appreciate twenty years ago are the sons. There are so many sons in their early twenties. They come home, leave their tennis rackets and hiking boots and clothes and books everywhere, immediately get on the phone to their friends, disappear after bestowing a distracted kiss on the parental forehead, stay out late, then jump on the back of a friend’s motorcycle and leave. And the mother? She is in ecstasy, gazing at the clothes strewn everywhere with deep, motherly happiness. So on mother’s day, I recommend Angela Thirkell, who understood a lot.

Also, I have discovered a glorious site to buy her books and every other English novel you might might to get your hands on. Anglophilebooks.net

Happy Mother’s Day!

I was staying at a friend’s house when someone emailed me about an article she was translating from Italian into English which quoted some parts of Rameau’s Niece. The translator asked me to check some passages so that she would not be translating back into English from the Italian what had already been translated from English into Italian, if you follow me. Luckily, there was a copy of the paperback of Rameau’s Niece in my friend’s bookcase. When I opened it up, I was able to find not only the requested passages, but also the traces of real book worms. I like it when the basis of a metaphorical phrase turns up. And I found the holes in the book strangely moving. Here are some blurry iphone pictures of their tunnels, which look very cozy.

I have noticed that instead of hearing “no problem” (the uncooperative taxi driver’s mantra) all the time, I have started to hear a much more spiritually melodious phrase: “No worries.” This is the refrain to soothe the anxious Jew. I thought it sounded laid back and Carribean, but Janet assures me it is Australian in origin. As in, “No worries, Mate.” I’m glad it has migrated here. Welcome.

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