a blind flaneur

[Source: NYT, Jolly nad Green, With an Agenda]
Dear Santa,
I’d love to stroll along the Seine and browse the bookstalls on Dec. 25. Will any be open for business? There is no better gift for a bouquiniste and blind flaneur than a musty old book. Any French book printed before 1900 would thrill me. AbeBooks.com […]

For many years I carried in my head an unfinished project that I called Gutenberg’s Exile. That phrase was shorthand for the complex relationship I have with books and reading. I was cut off from the printed word, expelled from the Gutenberg Revolution. A little twist of fate in my own DNA […]

[Photo by Ms. Modigliani]
I remember the book I held in my hands that day. I remember the feel of its time-warped, water-stained pages. I remember its murky, moldy river smell, call it the book’s bouquet, suggesting years of storage on the banks of the Seine. Had I bought it then, I could feel and smell […]

[Photo by wallyg]
My favorite Flickr posts combine photos with some text, always a richer context for a blind flaneur trying to see images. Here is what photographer wallyg said about the bouquinistes:
Les Bouquinistes, the riverside vendors who peddle used books, have set up shop along the Seine in the Latin Quarter since the mid-1500s, when […]

[Photo by Ms. Modigliani]
I remember the book I held in my hands that day. I remember the feel of its time-warped, water-stained pages. I remember its murky, moldy river smell, call it the book’s bouquet, suggesting years of storage on the banks of the Seine. Had I bought it then, I could feel and […]