Item from a British newspaper about a Parisian bookshop:

http://news.independentminds.l...nal.com/3403479.html

i dont know about you guys. but the ease with which online book sleuthing has replaced getting on the phone, or on the road for that matter, and tracking down an out-of-print tome makes me a little sad.

back in the day (not so long ago, 12 years or so), if i wanted an obscure collection of short stories, or a replacement of my adolescent favorite biography of jimmy clark, formula one racing driver... i'd have to start a chain rx of phone calls to half a dozen booksellers i'd accrued over the years. pleasant side conversations would always occur involving families and the weather(of course--w/o party-pooper algore's omnipresent sentiments of the-sky-is-falling-the-sky-is-falling/!!! anthropogenic global warning manifestos butting in), and somewhere, along the line, the prize would be collected.

now, sigh, alls i have to do is look for it on amazon or alibris. it's been a boon for my bookclub, but the spark is gone from the hunt...