As the centerpiece of our date night, Jess and I visited Garrison Keillor’s bookstore Common Goods Books on Thursday. In the hour and a half we spent there, I found many interesting books, but only two I would have liked to buy.
One was a children’s book called This Is Not My Hat. I won’t tell you about the book’s contents; you should make it your minor mission to turn one up for yourself somehow. But I will say: it brought back, in a cathartic, humourous way, that vague, exhilarating twinge of guilt-induced fear that tainted so much of my childhood, and which I thought I had forgotten. We will probably buy it before too long (when Sylvia is old enough to understand words).
The second was a nice paperback edition of Isaiah Berlin’s Freedom and Its Betrayal. I confess I had not heard of him before and don’t know if I’m supposed to like him or despise him (based on my personal alignments and affiliations &c.). But, standing there in the store, I read several pages of it and found it quite engaging. The only thing that put me off buying it was the $27 price tag.
