Book Recommendations

 In leaving an airplane at Schiphol a couple of weeks ago, I left behind the book I had brought to read while on vacation. It was certainly my own fault, though it did occur to me that KLM a) certainly knew that I had been riding in the seat where the book was, and b) knew the next flight I was booked on, ergo c) could have managed to get the book to me at the departure gate.

We arrived in Florence with no book for me to read. Fortunately, we were staying about a five minute walk from the Paperback Exchange. We stopped by, and I spotted After Virtue by Alasdair McIntyre. When I told my wife that I would be buying the book later in the day, when I wouldn't have to carry it about, a woman sitting on the floor looked up and said that she loved the book. So far, I can see why.

Some days later in Montecatini Terme, we looked into a Mondadori bookstore while killing time before dinner. There were some children of about ten in the store wearing red hats. One such boy walked up and addressed me in English hardly superior to my Italian. He let me know that the students were there to request that books be purchased for their school library. I agreed to buy one, and he pointed out the table from which one might choose. I was not impressed by the choices, and thought there were better ones on the shelves--stories by Joseph Conrad that probably could be read as straight adventure, Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson, no doubt others. But I picked what looked most promising on the table, and bought the school a hardback adventure story for sixteen Euros. In return, we got a couple of small scrolls of paper with quotations about reading, one of them from Umberto Eco.