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At Thanksgiving dinner this year, my host waxed ironic about the
incipient Black Friday, which would begin at 5 AM with some "when
they're gone, they're gone" super special deals at places like Fry's.
But not for me; I managed to laze about on Friday, finally dragging
myself to a couple of emporia around noon. After finding nothing I
wanted at the Apple Store (the brick & mortar one in Palo Alto), I
went across the street to Borders, housed in a building that was once
a gracious theater. Didn't buy anything there either, although I was
pleased to notice that Bill Bryson has a new book out. I discovered
Bryson on a business trip to Denmark of all places; desperate for
something, anything to read, I picked up one of his books on the
derivation of English words and phrases and was almost immediately
hooked. After that it was all of his travel books, although as I
wrote elsewhere, his are not the kind
of travel books that make one want to follow where he leads. And here
comes another one, although in this case we couldn't follow even if we
wanted to. Because, you see, the destination is the past,
specifically his own past in the Middle America of the 1950s.
I have to confess to not having read or listened to The Life and
Times. Not yet. But it's on my iPod, and just waiting for my
next road trip. The perfect thing to fill the empty spaces between
towns in the deserts of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and back to
Nevada.
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