Teen Sleuth Haunted Library

Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson
July 10, 1905-May 28, 2002

from AbeBooks

It’s arguably the most famous road in the world. Route 66 – just saying those words makes you want to hit the road. But did you know there are many wonderful used bookstores along the way from Chicago to Los Angeles? We have plotted the ultimate bibliophile’s road trip where you can visit 66 bricks and mortar used bookstores – who all sell on the AbeBooks marketplace – while driving from the shores of Lake Michigan to the beaches of Santa Monica. We are talking about two thousand miles and hundreds of thousands of books. It’s a booklover’s paradise – and worth the trip for that alone. Some folks travel for culinary adventures, some travel for landmarks and museums, but bibliophiles travel for the finest in literary offerings. It’s called Bookstore Tourism, and yes – there’s a book about it.

The bookstores we’ve featured vary in size, and range from quintessential neighborhood used bookstores to specialists dedicated to subjects like children’s books, history, mysteries, architecture, theology, alternative religions and cooking. Get your motor running, head out on the highway and discover some amazing used and rare bookshops in America’s heartland.

Continue reading →

Rebecca is one of my favorite novels, ever.

.

via the Paris Review

The moment of crisis had come, and I must face it. My old fears, my diffidence, my shyness, my hopeless sense of inferiority, must be conquered now and thrust aside. If I failed now I should fail forever.
―Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

It must be wonderful to be one of those pedestrians who own the streets. To be one of those people who walks where he likes with Ratso Rizzo–like entitlement, or, better yet, is gracious enough to usher a car forward when, in fact, the car has the right of way. Such people, of course, never give a timid wave of appreciation—a tacit “thank you for not killing me”—when a car lets them cross.

Continue reading →

Ruth Rendell died today and the world feels emptier already. I probably spent 2.5 solid years reading all her books. And i keep thinking it she’d had more time (she was 85), there would have been more. She was writing right up to the end. Some writers run out of steam. Not Ruth.

Ruth, deservedly the most decorated of British crime writer, transformed what had become a staid and formulaic genre into something that offered scope for a different kind of crime novel. She turned it into a prism for examining the world with a critical eye.

Two lines from one of my favorite of her novels, A Judgement in Stone: the opening with line: “Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read and write”