Month: January 2014

  • Book Recommendations

    Book Recommendations

    What’s on your bookshelf? What are you thinking of reading next? You’ll never guess where I got a great list of book recommendations recently: Perkin’s Restaurant in Bloomington, MN! Yes, Perkin’s, home of the American-Flag-Flown-as-Advertising-Billboard and Pigs in a Blanket. A couple dozen of us gathered in a back room of Perkin’s, set with tables…

  • Library Visit Aborted: Not Seeing the Biblioteca Nacional de España

    Library Visit Aborted: Not Seeing the Biblioteca Nacional de España

    On our last full day in Madrid this past December, I headed to the Biblioteca Nacional de España (the National Library of Spain). My plan was to sit down with a book of poetry or a random selection from the shelves, to wander and get a sense of the place, to take a couple photos,…