What does it do when we're asleep?
Realizing last night that I have for decades thought of myself as a full year older than I chronologically can have been for my first real job—I was fifteen—led into a crumble-to-dust reminiscence about the number of bookstores once to be found in Lexington Center, which gave me some serious future shock when we walked into Maxima while waiting to collect our order from Il Casale and it occupied the exact same storefront as my second job, also as a bookseller; it was perhaps the one form of retail to which I was natively suited. My third job was assistant-teaching Latin, but my fourth I accidentally talked my way into by recommending some titles to a fellow browser. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch's anniversary gift to me was a paperback of Satoshi Yagisawa's Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (trans. Eric Ozawa, 2010/2023). It was teeth-shockingly cold and we all but ran with our spoils back to the car.
Still across the table.
Whichever table it may be.
We had set out in search of resplendent food and found it in polpette that reminded us of the North End, a richly smoky rigatoni with ragù of deep-braised lamb, and a basil-decorated, fanciest eggplant parmesan I have encountered in my life, capped with panna cotta in a tumble of wintrily apt pomegranate seeds. Hestia investigated delicately but dangerously. After we had recovered, Rob showed me Powwow Highway (1989) right before it expired from the unreliable buffer of TCM because he thought and was right that I would love its anger and gentleness and hereness, plus its '64 Buick which has already gone on beyond Bluesmobile by the time it is discovered in a field of clunkers and a vision of ponies. It has no budget and so much of the world. As long as we're in it, we might as well be real.
spatch's anniversary gift to me was a paperback of Satoshi Yagisawa's Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (trans. Eric Ozawa, 2010/2023). It was teeth-shockingly cold and we all but ran with our spoils back to the car.
Still across the table.
Whichever table it may be.
We had set out in search of resplendent food and found it in polpette that reminded us of the North End, a richly smoky rigatoni with ragù of deep-braised lamb, and a basil-decorated, fanciest eggplant parmesan I have encountered in my life, capped with panna cotta in a tumble of wintrily apt pomegranate seeds. Hestia investigated delicately but dangerously. After we had recovered, Rob showed me Powwow Highway (1989) right before it expired from the unreliable buffer of TCM because he thought and was right that I would love its anger and gentleness and hereness, plus its '64 Buick which has already gone on beyond Bluesmobile by the time it is discovered in a field of clunkers and a vision of ponies. It has no budget and so much of the world. As long as we're in it, we might as well be real.
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For some reason it ended up with the French name aubergine here.
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I assume it's the same reason you have courgettes.
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Happy anniversary, mow. Let's keep discovering surprises.
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Within the last year, I referred to Maxima as being where the Gap was to someone who understood.
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No, it was all four simultaneously because it gave me the delusion that that was a normal number of bookstores for a town center, which I still frankly stand by. Sundial, Waldenbooks, Upper Story, and the Story Loft. I do not believe that Enchantments overlapped all of the above, especially since it was relatively short-lived, but I worked at Enchantments, Waldenbooks, and the Story Loft, as well as the Waldenbooks in the Burlington Mall. Chrysalis also carried some books, but was basically just New Age. I remember perusing a lot of crystals.
Within the last year, I referred to Maxima as being where the Gap was to someone who understood.
I remember the Gap on the other side of that weird little arcade, more centrally located on the block. The Waldenbooks space was definitely spilled over into by Raveis. I believe Maxima to be part of what's left.
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Happy anniversary! Please tell Rob the beard suits him.
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Thank you! I will.
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It has no budget and so much of the world. --I feel this sentence so intensely.
You guys look great. Carry on!
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It is! I think you would like the movie a lot.
You guys look great. Carry on!
Thank you!
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Thank you!
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Those are good photos and I'm glad you managed to find something suitably resplendent to eat!
Btw, found on tumblr (via The Times, according to the comments): https://www.tumblr.com/thisbluespirit/802214231267278848?source=share
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Thank you!
Btw, found on tumblr (via The Times, according to the comments)
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You are an excellent food writer! (That meal sounds marvelous.)
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I had that problem at Enchantments: they were a science fiction and fantasy bookstore and I was fifteen. Bookstores were my steadiest job until this last one! I miss them as an option.
You are an excellent food writer! (That meal sounds marvelous.)
Thank you! The restaurant was something of an impulse and it really paid off.
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Thank you! The food was a delight.
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Thank you! I only started it last night before bed: so far it seems to be book-loving, compactly detailed, the retrospective frame indicates it will trend toward heartwarming but so far not saccharine, the narrator's socially embarrassing uncle who runs the eponymous used book store is obviously awesome. I can let you know more once I've finished it.
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Please do! :D
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Apologies for the glitch in returning to this comment! It's a small, quiet book whose handful of main characters all have some private hurt or disappointment and while the narrative would almost certainly be described as a love letter to Jimbōchō and its used book stores, I liked very much that no one in it is magically healed by proximity to literature, nearly the entire point of the story is that nothing gets better without talking to people like an adult. Periodically something in its line of argument read facilely to me, but I couldn't tell if that was the novel or the translation. It did in fact miss most of the potential for saccharine by having everyone including the heroine be something of a weirdo. It was apparently adapted almost immediately for film and I am considering looking into it.
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