A  lovely Little Free Library

People cannot get enough of Little Free Libraries.

The movement started in 2009 in Wisconsin when Todd Bol built a bookcase shaped like a a one-room schoolhouse. Today, there are 25,000 Little Free Libraries. You can buy kits at littlefreelibrary.org/

At least five new LFLs have been built here in the last month.  The stylish LFL pictured above represents a big commitment.   The owners have  built a brick patio on the edge of the sidewalk and installed a bench painted with phrases like “fairy tale” and “short story.” The basic birdhouse-on-a-stick-style LFL is well-stocked:  recent titles ranging from Women in Love to Ordinary People to Memoirs of a Geisha to The Old Curiosity Shop.  There is a big turnover.

The bench has phrases like “fairy tale” and “short story” painted on it.

Very attractive, isn’t it?  I’d love a Little Free Library, but there are already five in my neighborhood.

A well-stocked library.

Not all are in quite such good shape, though.  On the trail, there is a Little Free Library shaped like a general store.  But it needs donations.

Little Free Library on the trail

The good thing:  most of the books have been taken.  The bad thing:  no one replaces them.

Here is the shelf today.

This one needs to be stocked!

Good God!  It needs to be stocked,

Do you want to shop for books in Bloomsbury (London)?  I do.   In the “NB” column  in the July 3 issue of the TLS,  the writer J.C. entertains us with news of new author plaques and bookstores “hidden away”  in Bloomsbury.

J.C. writes :

Across the street from Empson’s old place is Judd Books, specializing in bargain academic, but with remaindered poetry and fiction in dubious abundance. In adjacent Leigh Street resides Collinge & Clarke, with a hint of the Old Curiosity Shop, a place for seekers after private presses, periodicals and rear first editions.

And then he writes about Skoob.  (I have been there.)

Here are the overflowing shelves, the arcane subject headings, the musty smell, the foreign languages on the floor, the grumpy staff—so much a feature of Skoob that we’d take offense at a warm welcome—the piano we’ve never heard played.

Booksellers are often so grumpy!  In Jonathan Lethem’s hilarious story, “The King of Sentences,” two pretentious bookstore clerks (who snub their customers, as bookstore clerks do everywhere) try to write perfect sentences and stalk a reclusive writer they call the King of Sentences.  (The story is in Lethem’s new book, Lucky Alan and Other Stories.)

J.C.’s excellent column in the TLS is unfortunately not available free online, but you can buy a copy or read it at your local library.  And here is a link to the TLS website.  www.the-tls.co.uk/