(no subject)

About yesterday: my ability to listen to music has atrophied. I tried to listen intently, without stray thoughts, and for several pieces yesterday couldn't do that for more than a few seconds at a time. Some of this music was hard for me to get a grasp of -- unfamiliar, structure obscure -- but just now I listened to a track on a CD of mine, and had similar trouble. I used to be better at this. Well, no wonder, I used to spend more time at this, listening to music, as opposed to having it on while doing something else.

today's bookstores

Got some bagels at Bagel Oasis and hit some nearby bookstores. On 34th under 99 was a bookstore and tea shop that is no more. The 35th block of Stone Way has a cluster of three.

Seattle Book Center is a used-and-rare shop, more on the rare side, with some unusual stuff, mostly older (my favorite title was Fun with a Saw). Limited fiction. I didn't happen to find anything I was looking for. (Well, a Revolt in the Desert (the 1927 publication), which I paged through a large fraction of looking to see if it had a version of Lawrence's capture in Deraa -- but I wasn't really going to drop several hundred bucks on it.)

Seaocean Book Berth has everything to do with the sea: naval history, making model ships, coelenterates, Hornblower, Dirk Pitt, fly-fishing; they even take their marine mandate broadly enough to have a little section on Pepys. Great little bookstore, and has to be a top place to look for anything in its line.

B. Brown was not open.