Booked Non-Stop to Cleveland

So yeah: I really am here in Ohio, crashing at The Scribe's place (and swaddled in all manners of fleece blankies and layering shirts, as a tropical girl often is in this sort of weather), typing away on my Compaq while she's chasing down sources for last-minute stories. It's cold outside - blame the funnel cloud system over Missouri - and even Scribe's beloved Kittensley is hiding under the bed, bemoaning the weather. But I type on, having been up since 6:30 and running on decaf since.

Anyway, I post about The Cleve here because Scribe and I did a book exchange last night - I gave her a copy of The Tipping Point (to paraphrase the sign I saw at Powell's Books at the Portland airport: "What do you mean, you haven't read this yet?") and my copy of Honeymoon With My Brother to lend, and in turn she has both The Witch of Portobello (on loan from Coventry library) and Something Rotten on paperback.

I'm also still finishing From Bauhaus to Our House, which was the only book I was able to read while running from gate to gate (and snarfing all sorts of food along the way) at the airport. I'll admit that I was a Tom Wolfe newbie before this - even though I've had copies of The Right Stuff, Bonfire of the Vanities, and A Man in Full kicking about my shelves at various points in my life. It's a compact read, but I'm totally blown away by how Wolfe sets up - and knocks down - the Bauhaus renaissance in the United States (especially houses like these) as the impractical, imperfect dogma that it really is; it's a book that's as much about architecture as it really is about power, status, and intellectual snobbery. A perfect read, especially on an election year as mind-bending as the one we already have right now.

I also take back what I said about LAX having the best airport bookstore, too, after experiencing both Powell's at PDX and the notoriously huge airport bookstore at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. That's where I scored a copy of Ian McEwan's Saturday, which I forgot to read back home (I returned it to the Hawaii State Library so I wouldn't incur any more fines). I've saved this along with The Zahir (recommended highly by, of all people, my Dad), on my list of airplane reads for the trip back to Honolulu.

Finally, I don't think it would be right for me to write a Cleveland entry without mentioning a certain literary institution in the city...

That's right. Mac's Backs, I am so coming after you.