Depart Flagstaff 3:10pm, Friday, July 20
Macy's Coffee Shop, Flagstaff, AZ
Not to be confused with the department store. Their logo shows a naked man--it's nothing indecent--wallowing in a steaming coffee cup as if he were soaking in a hot spring. Their menu of sandwiches, salads and soups includes vegan options and, for the coffee, growth hormone-free milk. I was able to have lunch, recharge my computer battery, take advantage of their complimentary wireless, and interview someone reading a book. I missed talking to a Noam Chomsky reader because I couldn't pull myself away from my computer, but here's someone reading
The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Recently he read a biography of Thomas Moore, who was Lord Chancellor to Henry the VIII. He's fascinated with this period of English history.His favorite book--The Bible.
If he were to write his own book it would be a history of Greece, during the time of the Persian wars. He minored in history at Arizona State University.
Greyhound Terminal, Flagstaff, AZ
Reading Jambalaya, The Natural Woman's Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals, by Luisah Teish. The most interesting part of the book so far--a chart of seven African Powers (I need to look this up). What interests her most is the cross-over between voodoo and her own religion, Wicken. She got the book in the Latin Quarter, where she lives in New Orleans.
She's headed to Vegas to visit her family.
She's also reading something she picked up browsing through the bookstore--Around the Way Girls 2, part of an Urban Book series, by Lajill Hunt, Kashamba Williams and Thomas Long.
The last book she put down without finishing it was Grisham's Time to Kill. She only lasted two pages.
Her favorite book of all time is The Coldest Winter Ever, which is about a fifteen year-old girl from the ghetto in Brooklyn.
Do she and her daughter read together? Yes! They like The Cat and the Hat, by Dr. Seuss.
Barnes and Nobles bookstore, Flagstaff, AZ
Reading Ironside, A Modern Faery's Tale, by Holly Black. It's edgy, she said, and good. It's the second book in a trilogy.
She likes reading Anne Rice and psychological books, like Diary of a Schizophrenic Girl and Girl Interrupted, by Susanna Kaysen. Does she ever put a book down without finishing? Yes, though not recently. If the author doesn't create good imagery she doesn't want to read it.
If she were to write her own book, it'd be science fiction or fantasy.
Favorites--anything by Anne Rice and Witch Child, by Celia Rees, which is a diary of a girl who traveled from England to the U.S. during the Salem Witch Trials.
Something that has helped her through her life--a book called Color Psychology and Color Therapy, by Faber Birren, which helps you target your stress areas.
Barnes and Nobles Bookstore Information Desk, Flagstaff, AZ
What's selling? The Bestsellers, the New Arrivals, and everything on the Summer Reading tables, which are a combination of selections from Barnes and Nobles and books from local Flagstaff teachers from their reading lists, which include Hamlet, by Shakespeare; Native Son, by Richard Wright; Animal Farm, by George Orwell ; Farenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury.
2 comments:
Hamlet and 1984--both among the literary masterpieces I revere. Maybe I should join the Flagstaff teachers' summer reading program.
By the way, the gentleman who aspires to pen a history of the Greco-Persian wars--his name wouldn't happen to be Herodotus, would it?
While you're following Murakami's day-long odyssey After Dark, I'll be on the well-trodden path of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. I read Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights a long time ago--while I was still in Burma. It seems unfair to read one sister's work but not the other's, so I picked up my copy of Jane Eyre several weeks ago.
I'm three quarters through it. Jane just broke up with Mr. Rochester. I'm quite devastated.
Oops! I just reread your original post. The Orwellian title on the list is Animal Farm--not 1984, as I'd hastily jotted down. Both, of course, remain my favorite masterpieces.
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