Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn passed away last night. So I turned to one of most highlighted passages in my antique copy of "The Gulag Archipelago" to remember this fiercely beautiful writer by.

Rest in peace, sir.

...is listening to Jorge Luis Borges talk about "This Craft of Verse":

Borges giving the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard in 1967-68.

Thing I do to avoid doing things that I don't like to do (taxes!)

Since reading, for me, is kind of a religion, I wish they built a bookstore like this here in New York: a medieval cathedral/church literally turned into a church for/of books. Till then I will make do with the high windows of the Union Square Barnes & Noble, situated in a landmark New York building, circa 1881.

I had read about this church of books somewhere before but it was brought back to my attention by this article in the Guardian, on the top 10 "fairest among all" bookstores around the world. Also as this photo indicates, the Dutch did use this space for storing bikes before this stunning bookish metamorphosis.