• From abandoned Wal-Marts to Venetian warrens, thirty places for book lovers. (N.b.: gaining access to number thirteen could be problematic.)
• A Colorado library is experimenting with loaning out seeds as well as books.
• Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, set in the pre-9/11 Manhattan tech sector, drops in September.
• “Writing by hand is laborious, and that is why typewriters were invented. But I believe that the labor has virtue, because of its very physicality.” Mary Gordon extols the virtues of longhand. 
• Speaking of! Proust’s handwriting, while bad, offers moments of clarity, says Colm Tóibín: “The word homosexual, as it is written in his hand here, stands alone; it is very clearly written, each letter perfectly made and totally legible. There is a feeling as you look at it that it was a word Proust did not often write, or that perhaps he enjoyed writing, or that it was a term he now wanted to take his time over, and he needed Vallette to be able to see it clearly.”