Carpe Librum Is Back, Indefinitely

A co-worker I introduced to Carpe Librum last spring returned the favor last week by telling me that it is back. It is in the spring location, on the west side of 17th St. NW, between K and L Streets. One of the back rooms it had is no longer open. There is less stock, and less room to show it.

But there are books worth buying. It is strongest in the General Fiction heading. It has many books in the biography and memoir section. To be sure, it is down to a couple of copies of Eat, Pray, Love from the spring's 30. But it had, till I bought it, a book with letters and diary entries by Barbara Pym, and it has The Road From Coorain. The history section has Becoming Charlemagne, and an odd-looking book proposing that Homer understated the scale of the Trojan War. I will shortly unload on Carpe Librum three or four books I have been meaning to give away.

I suspect that reappearance of Carpe Librum at such a location has as much to do with a weak market for commercial real estate as with a thirst for used books or a will to support reading programs in the Washington, DC, public schools. But those wishing to support the efforts of its sponsor, "Turning the Page", can attend Carpe Noctem this Friday at the Washingon Post building on 15th St. NW.