Giveaway: Patti Smith's "Just Kids" (CLOSED)

In honor of Patti Smith's National Book Award win this week I'm giving away a new copy of
her book, "Just Kids."

So leave a comment here. The winner will be announced on Monday!

AND THE WINNER IS: Someone in Jogja City!

So, what are you reading now?

At the moment, I'm reading Edith Wharton's "Italian Backgrounds." I've read lots of travel diaries about Italy, but Wharton's is amazing, like some delicious multi-layered tiramisu. You can't decide which is more lovely -- the subject or the prose.

This is escapist reading at its most, well, ravishing...

Photo by StopKatie.

Patti Smith Wins

Some very cool news:  The National Book Foundation just announced that Smith's autobiography "Just Kids," covering her years as muse to photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, won a National Book Award this year in the non-fiction category.

More winners here.

Add: Smith recently told Galleycat that writing is like exercise. "You have to commit to doing it and you have to do it every day," she said.
I wonder if blogging counts?

My Favorite Used Bookstore

The great thing about reading is it takes you places you've never been before or never thought to go. And there's no place where that's truer than in a great secondhand bookstore...



It's a place where tattered best sellers from a decade ago
merge with books that defeat time...

*

And literary journals are mixed with foreign magazines...



Like some perfect literary alchemy...



So this is my favorite hangout...



It's called Read Books and it's in Eagle Rock, a neighborhood in Los Angeles.
Lately I've been buying a book and a magazine (requiring much restraint), and then heading a block down the street to Auntie Em's for coffee and a chocolate cupcake.

Added bliss: sitting at an outside table, reading and watching
the sunset over the Santa Monica Mountains.

ADD: I just realized that this post has received comments from readers in six countries: the US, the UK, the Philippines, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. So lovely to know that the love of wonderful old books is global!

Are you on Tumblr?

I'm finally trying to do something with my long neglected Tumblr page.

Do you want to exchange links?!

Hamlet, the FB News Feed Edition

Want to read more?
Click Here!

(Hamlet page created by the very clever Sarah Schmelling.)