City Lights Bookstore, Sylva NC

 There may be a more famous bookstore in San Francisco by this name, but this is the one I drive 50 miles to enjoy. (And I can certainly drive 15 miles to several great bookstores in Asheville NC also!)

This is the simple entrance on the top edge of a hill. There's not all that much parking on the one way street, so we were fortunate to get the handicap spot right by the door.

A very fun critters umbrella hung overhead where I browsed biographies. I also found a lovely book of Mary Oliver's poems.  They have a good selection of used books, mostly paperback fiction, but many other topics, as well as a good selection of Appalachian and Native American publications.

I've sworn off fiction for a while, having been too identified with the characters in my last fiction reading. So biographies/journals/poetry...all the wonderful non-fiction captured me.

Then our fun treat was eating in the cafe downstairs.  Good organic food, prepared after you order it. 

Helen had the London Fog special tea, a black tea with a shot of vanilla, finished off with milk.

Teresa ate a comfort lunch of tomato bisque soup with a cheese sandwich, while Helen had a breakfast burrito something, and I had the soup with a spinach and apple salad.

1/12-13/23 Weather update...warmish day, high winds and rain for a couple of hours including big thunder in the mountains (it rolls on and on and on). South of us at dinner time we had some tornadoes that got on our weather report, in South Carolina.  Today (Fri) is much colder, woke up with 35 degrees and partly cloudy, and snow expected this afternoon. Temps tonight into the 20s.

Today's quote:

There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.

—Douglas Adams
from a Speech at Digital Biota 2, Cambridge, UK, (1998)

Bookstore visit (again)

Is it just me, reaching a certain age? Or a certain income? Or a certain level of loving to read a real book almost an hour a day?

I LOVE used bookstores.  I also love libraries with real books.
And I even sometimes will visit the places where new books are sold, an oasis of thoughts piled on shelves with bright colorful spines.

I admit to reading digital library books for the ease and comfort.  But there is only so much available that way.  Fortunately the older books are still there, and they are so good.

But if I have a trip planned and I know there's at least one good used bookstore there, it's included in my wanderings.

This last week, it was Sylva, NC, and the City Lights Book Store (new and used)...which has a lovely cafe' downstairs where we had delicious salads and sandwiches.  And as we left Sylva, we once again saw other used bookstores that we haven't tried yet.  One of these days...

 I seldom use a paper calendar, but have a lovely copy of the WeMoon book style one (the one with the goddess and fire in a circle right in the middle)   I have several friends who contribute to it, so it's very special for me.  These are of course new!

Where to start in such a well organized store. I hadn't thought about it before I got there! I walked the aisles until I realized what I really felt like looking for.  And giving the area a sniff test is always what my allergic person does, and was so grateful not to have the usual dusty moldy scent of many used bookstores.

 The new books included a children's book about "She Persisted." Kuddos for teaching children what women's rights are all about!

The bathrooms are titled "Toilet" and have no gender designation...and lots of fun posters on all the walls.  This was my favorite.

Today's Quote:
In doing service for others, we often find answers to our own questions and solutions to our own problems.