I recently read Julie Hayden’s Lists of the past, which is not readily available and well worth the effort to find.  The first half is short stories of urban dwellers much like ourselves (except nobody stores liquor under the kitchen sink anymore, right?  That’s some strange habit from another era – bourbon, Windex, vodka, Ajax…).  The second half is a larger story that surfaces in individual pieces that could easily stand alone.

My recommendation to you, gentle readers, is to get the podcast from the New Yorker of Lorrie Moore reading one of these stories, Day old baby rats.  Put that in your personal listening device and listen as you move overground and underground, the literature of the city blending with the physical experience.  Let me know how it goes.

As an added bonus, on the same page is Orhan Pamuk reading Vladimir Nabokov.  The combination of Pamuk’s Turkish accent and Nabokov’s Russian perspective is hypnotic.

And finally,  the Emily Dickinson garden at NYBG.  I didn’t expect anything great, most of the flowers are familiar standbys.  But it was really, really wonderful.  Worth the trip from Staten Island.