You know how much I love this bookshop, which is truly my favorite bookshop ever. It’s the stuff of my dreams, my dream being living in the same city as this treasure, better yet, the same neighborhood, where I could stop in two or three times a week and peruse the shelves and talk to the incredibly knowledgeable staff and buy wonderful books.

I follow the shop on Instagram and the other day, they posted about a book they had been recommending to their regulars. Here’s the post:

“A recent favorite of ours has been ‘Something of His Art: Walking to Lübeck with J. S. Bach’ by Horatio Clare. Joyful, intelligent and articulate, Clare has a clear eye for both near and far. He has a most wonderful knack of looking at a woodland track on a high ridge, with its owls and goldcrests, or at the margins of a light industrial landscape, and then conjuring its early C18th century ghost to walk peacefully before the mind’s eye. In beautiful, rhythmic, resonant sentences he describes walking along the route that was taken by Johann Sebastian Bach, who, as a young man, walked one autumn 300 miles north from Arnstadt to Lübeck to visit the aging organist and composer Buxtehude. Clare also did a short series about this last year for BBC Radio 3. This is another beautifully produced book from Litte Toller Books in Dorset, with a collage by Ed Kluz for the jacket. We absolutely love this book and have been having huge fun selling it to unsuspecting customers these last weeks. One came back a week later in a state of ecstatic intoxication to take everything we have by Horatio Clare – about a half a dozen…”

I ask you, dear readers, how could I resist? It sounds absolutely wonderful. “Ecstatic intoxication!”

I decided that I would order a copy from John Sandoe Books. When I was there, I saw a stack of packages wrapped in brown paper, with their distinctive mailing label, all ready to be sent out in the post – I even took a picture of the stack – and I could think of nothing more wonderful than receiving a package from them in the mail. So I emailed them, telling them of my visit in October and my love for their shop, and my interest in the book they had written about. They responded – or rather, Christopher responded – with some suggestions as to methods of paying and with an immediate “I have reserved a copy for you.” All so personal and lovely in the way that only the British can be. (And the way only an independent bookseller can be.)

I suspect it will go out at the beginning of the week. I told Don that I’m almost more excited to see the package than the book!

I’ve decided that I will do this once or twice a year; order a book that has been published in Britain and is not yet available here; something recommended by the wise and extremely well read staff.

A present to myself.

In other news, we have started to receive screener copies of movies and series that have been nominated for Screen Actors Guild Awards. We watched Beautiful Boy  last night. It’s a powerful movie about addiction and the toll it takes on the addict and his family. It’s beautifully done. Timothée Chalamet is extraordinary in the title role. Steve Carell is wonderful and touching in the role of his father. The whole cast is pitch perfect. I didn’t know that it is based on a true story until the end of the movie. I recommend it highly – it is riveting.

In the past week we’ve seen Roma  (I can’t say enough about this brilliant movie) Bird Box, and Beautiful Boy –  each of them incredible.

I’m going to run an errand or two (we need more drinking glasses after breaking two this week!) because I’ve been stuck in the house for four days and I need to get out!

Tomorrow: the piano parts return!

Happy Sunday.