Monthly Archives: November 2013

September, 2009. This beautiful unaffected place is up a quiet cobbled street in the middle of the charmingcentral town of the Rioja wine region.  The town either manages to hide its touristic aspect, or doesn’t really have much and is the … Continue reading →

November 2013 This little spot, site of the former Fuel, is named as a combination of “farm to table”, but delivers pretty good food and nice service independent of any imaginary locavore or health benefits. The welcome was a bit … Continue reading →

Roth P. Operation Shylock. Vintage (paper) 1994, first published 1993. An article in the New Yorker sent me looking for The Ghost Writer by Roth as I was getting ready for a vacation, but the bookstore seemed to have every one of … Continue reading →

Woolf V. Mrs. Dalloway. Harcourt Harvest (paper) 2005, first published 1925. F;9/13. I read this after being strongly impressed by Cunningham’s The Hours.  Access to the the emotion of that recent book felt effortless, but squeezing the juice from this one required … Continue reading →

November 2013. We’ve been to this place a dozen times over about five years and always liked it. It’s incredibly noisy and they don’t take reservations so (because, I think, it’s mentioned in guidebooks and also pretty good eating) there … Continue reading →

De Waal, Edmund. The Hare With Amber Eyes. Picador 2010. Biography, 10/13. I can’t avoid feeling ambiguous about this interesting and deeply relevant story. The family, venue, and being (partly) Jewish resonate with my own family’s experience. But the author … Continue reading →

October 2013. I chose this restaurant after going over the Michelin Guide and other references with some care, deciding it was the likeliest in this famously food-oriented town to deliver real satisfaction without scaling the Vatican of haute cuisine. I … Continue reading →

November 2013. What a find! This city generally is lovely and of an accessible size, distinct from New York and Chicago. The taxis are cheap and you can get from the center to anywhere downtown for about $10. There is … Continue reading →