The Bookish Traveller's Spring 2014 Tour

The Bookish Traveller's World Tour of Bookstores and Libraries a city's bookstores and libraries are the major indicators of what people in the city read. Hence, they are indicators of what people in that city think. After a long drive that included circling Paris twice on a failed attempt to locate the hotel then running out of fuel because of a broken gauge, waiting for a French tow truck after sleeping in the van at 8 degrees centigrade, I arrived in La Rochelle. In France, I have a different attitude about life; I feel as if I have energy to live as much time again as I have lived since I first visited the Netherlands and France in 1977, and again in 1979, with side trips three times to the UK. Walking in Paris this summer, I had the insight that I was connecting back to who I was before the tangent taken of family and career. The three decades and a half intervening between 1977 and 2013 is a lived life of events and feelings and reflections about those events. My Bookish Traveller's World Tour of Bookstores will occupy me for awhile. This time, it took me to the La Rochelle Library. A city's library and bookstores, realized one day in France, are a prism through which to glimpse a city's intellectual life. What people read is a window into what they think. A city's library and bookstore is a nexus of the reading community--such places are the realm of the bookish traveller. My travel most recently on the European motorways brought me north of Paris to Ermenonville and Parc Jean Jacques Rousseau. (http://www.parc-rousseau.fr) His name is familiar to this park, in the English style, as a nineteenth century philosopher. There is a small philosophy bookstore in the park's office and center, wherein philosophy events are organized to take place in the park, a short drive from Paris North. The Bookish Traveller's Favorite Book Stops Shakespeare and Moe's in Berkeley Black Oak Books in Berkeley Recycled Books in San Jose and Campbell Logos in Santa Cruz City Lights in San Francisco Miami Coconut Grove Manchester, England Shakespeare in Paris LaRochelle Library John…in Detroit