Reading in Amsterdam

It occurs to me that I could enliven this blog occasionally with photos of bookstores and other visual references to reading. I often notice such things when travelling — as in this bookstore window in Amsterdam, which seemed wonderfully framed to me, very inviting. . . .

While you’re peeking through the windows, I’ll tell you that I very much enjoyed Val McDermid’s latest Carol Jordan/Tony Hill mystery, The Retribution, although I did NOT enjoy reading it on my Kobo Touch. Escape reading should not include fighting to turn a page . . . I’d get to a new chapter, advance a page or two, then no matter where I poked or tickled or stroked or stabbed at the page, I’d go backwards into the previous chapter. Not at all a relaxing experience and doubly frustrating in a mystery novel — there’s a reason such books are called page-turners!

Have any of you experienced this frustration? It’s not a problem with my first-generation Kobo, but my husband has purloined that. Not too bad with the Kobo Vox, but besides that being too heavy for my travel purposes, I’ve lent it to my daughter . . .

Anyway, I’ve struggled on, completed the novel, and I have to say the mystery plot as well as the character development was very satisfying.

After we passed the bookstore above, and on our way to the Amsterdam Centraal train station, we came across these street functional sculptures. I haven’t been able to track down information about the artist — one, at least, has a Keith Haring vibe. I couldn’t help thinking one of them would be fun to settle onto for a reading session. . . .

But I was a bit shy (and we had a train to catch!)

Would you have sat?

What might you have read, on this seat, in an Amsterdam street?

2 Comments

  1. Ryan
    13 May 2012 / 5:53 pm

    On that seat one could ONLY read Freud.

  2. materfamilias
    13 May 2012 / 7:46 pm

    Good call, Ryan!

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