Blathr Wayne Lorentz

For the last few decades, when I read a book I use the stub from my most recent airline boarding pass as a bookmark. Since itʼs dated, and yellows with age, it encourages me to keep traveling, if for nothing else to get a fresh bookmark.

Because we now live in an age of print-you-own, and digital boarding passes the one Iʼm currently using isnʼt my most recent. But if I have a few extra minutes when checking in, I try to print a fresh boarding pass at the kiosk for whatever book Iʼve brought with me. The new ones arenʼt nice and thick and glossy — at least for domestic travel. But international passes on a quality airline are still thick, durable, and evocative of a time when it was de rigueur to fly to another continent, and then figure out hotel and transportation arrangements after you arrived. The conveniences of the internet allow us to move around more easily, but have leached much of the adventure out of travel.

This store has a wide selection of books.

New from Scholastic! Itʼs Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Hidden Cat!

Look for it in a bookmobile near you!

When new used books are received at Crescent City Books, sometimes it is found that they contain little slips of paper. So the staff at Crescent City posts those around the store for everyone to see.

Thereʼs shopping lists, love notes, and incoherent word salads of all kinds.

If youʼre looking for inspiration, itʼs thumbtacked serendipity aplenty.

Curation is the key to quality. It's the difference between a disc jockey and an iPod on shuffle mode. It brings order to chaos. It allows the best things to stand out in a way that makes sense.

Curated in probably the best way to describe Faulkner House Books. Perhaps, curated to a fault. This isn't a place you go to explore the unknown. It's where you go to fill in the gaps in your knowledge. To buy important books by important people. To re-read all the things you were assigned to read in high school, but were too young to appreciate.

There probably isn't a bad book in the entire store, which is both a blessing and a curse. It's good to know that no matter what you buy, your money won't be wasted. But at the same time, the only kind of undiscovered fringe writers you will find are people who were undiscovered and fringe half a century ago, and are now so mainstream their books are covered in school.

I ended up with Soldier's Pay, because it's the book that William Faulkner wrote when he lived in this building, which is why Faulkner House Books is called Faulkner House Books. It's a good book, once you burrow through the first few chapters and get used to the writing style. In high school I was given the choice of a Hemingway book and a Faulkner book, and I chose Hemingway. Now my education is complete.

Someone left this book on a light pole support for any random stranger to find and read.

While I am a random stranger, Iʼm also about 50 books behind on my reading, so Iʼll leave this for someone else.

Itʼs nice to know thereʼs another soul out there who sets books completed free, rather than throwing them in the trash. I leave mine on trains.

She canʼt read, but Annie sure digs those Nancy Drew books.

Iʼm reading an old paperback dime store novel. I guess this is the 1970ʼs equivalent of a pop-up ad.

I think the reason that many people on the internet incorrectly put punctuation outside of closing quotation marks is because they donʼt read books.

If you read, youʼre used to seeing it done correctly, and are familiar with it.

This is correct: “Word.”

This is not correct: “Word”.

Donʼt believe me? Open any book.

Iʼm at a coffee shop with nothing to do for four hours. Good thing I keep emergency brain-rotting material in the car.

There are twelve people at Starbucks this morning.

Three are reading the New York Times. Two are reading the local paper. One is reading a book. The rest are lost in their phones.

I guess journalismʼs not dead after all.

All it takes is one good sunbeam, and my living room looks like a scene from every Agatha Christie novel.

Except, with cats.