Between the Pages

 I'm back! Welcome to the day 4 recap. Day 4 CITIES Or, make that heading "city" singular. We spent all of our time in Philadelphia today. Today was a good day. So much so that I began calling this city, which I have been to only a handful of times, "Philly." Philly was kind to us today. We ate great food, walked some beautiful streets, and viewed hundreds of impressive books.  LIBRARIES The Rosenbach Located in Rittenhouse Square, the Rosenbach is an elegant 19th-century townhome filled with one of the greatest collections of manuscripts, first editions, artwork, and rare works of literature. The list of priceless items collected by the Rosenbach brothers in the 1900s is long: the original manuscripts of James Joyce's Ulysses , first edition Jane Austen books and Don Quixote , and Lewis Carroll's own copy of Alice in Wonderland . Dr. Rosenbach was "the Napoleon of the auction room," where he bartered and fought for priceless manuscripts to col...

 I'm back! Welcome to the day 3 recap! Day 3 CITIES We were physically in three main cities today: Charlottesville , Baltimore , and Philadelphia. We only did activities/site-saw in one of those cities. Today, we visited the George Peabody Library at Johns Hopkins University and another bookstore, Greedy Reads, in Baltimore, Maryland.  LIBRARIES We had the opportunity to visit the most Instagram-able library of every Pinterest girl's dreams: the George Peabody Library. Social media aside, it truly is breathtaking. As soon as we walked into the beautiful, heavy wooden doors, I knew this would be a memorable experience. George Peabody's vision for this library during its conception in 1878 was for it to be a "cathedral of books." Peabody, philanthropist and patron of the humanities, created the library to be a center of arts and culture for the people of his beloved Baltimore. The George Peabody Library was America's first music conservatory. The Peabody Institu...

 I'm back! Welcome to the day 2 (the first *official* day) recap.  Day 2 CITIES We visited stops in Charlottesville and Richmond today. There is an hour's drive between the cities, and I am overall glad that we made the trek into Richmond today.  AUTHOR'S HOUSES Monticello Today, we had the pleasure of visiting Monticello, the original home of the United States's third President, author of the Declaration of Independence, and founder of the University of Virginia: Thomas Jefferson. While I last visited Monticello when I was eight years old, Jefferson's home and gardens held a new significance to me this time around. While its beauty and grandeur is well-founded, the literary air captured my attention.  Enlightenment thinker, scientist, writer, and politician, Thomas Jefferson was a reader above all. Jefferson's interests, which were varied and largely important to his long life, were reflected in his book collection, covering various subjects including  "vi...

Hello everyone, and welcome to 16 days on the road with Between the Pages! I am traveling the east coast for around two weeks finding the best bookstores, exploring literary sites, and plundering my way through roughly 2,000 miles of land, through hamlets and cities, through rain and sun. This reader is up to the challenge. Are you? As promised, I will supply a daily report of my wanderings including the cities we explored, the sites we discovered, and the shops we visited. Without further adieu, here is day 1! (More exciting reports are to come, as driving was today's main {*only*} activity.) Day 1 CITIES We made it to three main cities today: Bristol, TN , Knoxville, TN , and Charlottesville, VA . Again, today's main activity was driving (and driving and driving and driving). Today was not my first journey to any of the three cities; however, this road trip shed new light on each one. BOOKSTORES Our first literary stop of the entire trip was a spontaneous one. The original pl...

Reading and writing, reading and writing, reading and writing: that's what I hope to keep doing all summer (with some swimming and seeing friends mixed in there too!). Here's another review! This is Stuart Turton's The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle,  and it's a doozy.  SUMMARY THE RULES OF BLACKHEATH Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered at 11:00 p.m. There are eight days and eight witnesses for you to inhabit. We will only let you escape once you tell us the name of the killer. Understood? Then let's begin... Evelyn Hardcastle WILL die. And every day Aiden Bishop WILL try to identify her killer and break this neverending cycle he has somehow found himself in. But every time a new day begins, Aiden inhabits the body of a different guest at Blackheath. Some of Aiden's hosts will be more helpful than others. Some of Aiden's hosts are more capable than others. Some of Aiden's hosts start to overcome Aiden's true personality. Then again, who is Aiden? A...