Saturday, April 24, 2010

Saturday Rambling

I started today totally pouting about not attending the LA Times Festival of Books this weekend (I wanted the damn tote bag, at least!).  I had planned to go, it's just 3 hours south of me, but events involving irritating people kept me home. 
So, we jumped in the car and headed up to Morro Bay and Cayucos for a little excursion.  It was wonderful.  Not as great as the Festival would have been, but I did discover a bookstore "Book Exchange" in Los Osos, which is unique in that it features tons of Henning Mankell and is owned by two cats.  Yes, they own it but they do have a marvelous assistant, Joan, who helped me and the Mr. find some great books.  I picked up Henning Mankell's The White Lioness, Missing by Karin Alvtegen, and The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo...all at great discounted prices.  The Mr. found some Spanish titles he had been searching for.  What was great was the mix of new and used books, stacked to the ceiling, in an environment I could have easily spent the day in.

Farmer's Market in Morro Bay was great and it was odd to discover that the woman selling amazing baked goods lived down our street, only eight houses away.  We found blackberry-red pepper flavored vinegar, baked goods, and fresh fish.  Heading home with that and stacks of books made for a nice day!  No cute tote bag though....

On another note...back to the Scandinavian Reading Challenge.  More entrants have made this really exciting.  Would it bother anyone to let me know what country they are in?  It would be neat to add a map of participants to show our worldwide devotion to Scandinvian writing...post a comment with your country in it if you have time! Regarding titles, keep in mind your choices DO NOT have to be crime, any genre is fine.

It's not Scandinavian, but I'm currently reading The Confessions of Noa Weber, winner of the best literary translation award for a novel.  Hard to get into, but now I'm hooked.

8 comments:

  1. I'm in Australia - I know you know that but in case you worried that I wouldn't want others to know - I figure they'd have a hard time tracking me down as it's a big country :)

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  2. Sounds like a wonderful weekend, it's a shame you missed your Book Festival but it sounds like a relaxing weekend nonetheless

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  3. Amy we've been having a friendly debate at my blog this weekend about what countries are officially in Scandinavia. I used Wikipedia to come up with Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden but someone who lives in Denmark says that Finland and Iceland aren't considered Scandinavian but are Nordic. So...as the host of the challenge do you have any confirmed views about what countries (and therefore what books) will count for the challenge?

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  4. I'm in the UK. I hope you enjoy Missing as much as I did!

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  5. Bernadette,
    Good question! When I first started the Challenge I did some research and came up with Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands...some websites even added Greenland and Estonia. I'd consider any of those to be fine...I don't know the difference between that and Nordic but the map I used was one from an online travel site for Scandinavia and I think it showed all of the above.
    I'm very flexible!

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  6. I was wondering if you went to the book festival! I was so jealous because I read about it being there and wanted to go so badly and knew you lived relatively close by....i'm glad you enjoyed the weekend otherwise ~ hey, they may have totebags left over! contact the festival organizers and check to see!!! never hurts to ask...

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