Bloggers In The Marin Bookstore

Today we travelled to Corte Madera in Marin County to meet Maria Benet who writes the blog Alembic (which we always pronounce “alembique”). We met in the bookstore Book Passage, perhaps the best independent bookstore in Marin County, which as is the bookstore fashion these days, has its own little caf, perfect for long conversation. It was a lively literary conversation: we talked about everything from publishing poetry to the banality of the book club scene. After sitting in the caf for a while, we wandered the store, where we introduced her to Jasper Fforde (we ourselves bought a copy of The Well of Lost Plots, while she went home with the first book in the Thursday Next series, The Eyre Affair). We both left with a copy of the short story in verse, The True Tale of a Tough Tiburon Tabby, illustrated by the San Francisco cartoonist Phil Frank.

Afterwards, we had lunch at Il Fornaio, all of us having eggs for brunch. (Maria’s dinner plans were to have a salad of arrugula, feta cheese, and figs; Pica thought was a very Marin County sort of salad to have, and it inspired us to have our own dinner of arrugula, mixed greens, and blue cheese). We then ferried her home up the steepest hill Nellie has yet to climb. Marin County is a great place to live if you love hills, with Mt. Tamalpais dominating the view from their house. Alas, housing is only affordable there if you happened to have moved there twenty years ago.

Above we have a photo of us three bloggers staring at Alembic on one of Maria’s laptops (the Benets have a geek’s paradise of an home office, with more computers and tech books than one can count).