Random images from book buying expeditions

Oh the endless fun one has with Vladimir & Leon

Tintern Abbey en route Wales

Winter in South Wales

Brekky in a roadside caf

Sometimes there are compensations...

Team Saab wins 2011 Bakewell-White 36 State Championship

Consistency pays: 2, 4, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2
Gordon Lucas, Graeme Spence, Brent Fowler, John Naughton, John Gardiner, Mark Wheeler, Giles Harden-Jones, Jay Halligan, Mark Atkinson, Johnny Holder, Dan Smolenski, Harry Schmitz

Congratulations to 'Grand Prix' and 'Anemoi' for pushing us all the way in a great series!

Next week: Team Saab vs Anemoi in the final heat of the Royal Perth Club Championship.

The "Books Suite" at the Michelberger, Berlin

Dinner with Rory and Kelly (Snilda's girl, merchant banker,  Coen Brothers heroine ) and far too many Berlin cocktails may have hazed my judgment, especially with a 7:00 am assessment of bookshop locations at Berlin Hauptbahnhof scheduled. Is Berlin ready for an English language bookshop? If not, I am at least having a good time thinking about it. This is the cutting edge of modern culture. Rory and I avoid discussing the aesthetic ramifications of the impact of taggers on the urban landscape. I would not want to be alienated from dear son on the grounds of some philosophical contretemps. I suspect the bourgeois dimensions to this old Scotch boy will make Rorz amenable to a compromise modus vivendi with Da. (Do used car dealers have these worries in communicating with their progeny?) Afer all, his knowledge of top of the list vintage wines is superior to mine.

I dream a lot

In an ideal world, I would like Karl O'Callaghan as WA's next State Premier and Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister of an ALP government.

Future Premier of Western Australia

Future Prime Minister of an ALP Government

That's when I'm not dreaming of Nigella Lawson licking an icecream.

10 Restaurants Worth a Plane Ride

(From Evan Sung for The New York Times and M. Wells in Long Island City)

APONIENTE : EL PUERTO DE SANTA MARíA, Spain

In the exclusive world of America’s and Europe’s top chefs, Ángel León has been getting some hard-won respect. His 22-seat restaurant, Aponiente, which opened in 2005 in a small port village in southern Spain, specializes in sustainable seafood; it was awarded a Michelin star last year. Mr. León, 33, is an insatiably inventive and curious chef who is always trying to invent techniques with traditional products — using unusual (to say the least) ingredients like fish eyeballs (as a sauce thickener) and plankton.

BENU : SAN FRANCISCO

Urchin tofu with salmon roe, Benu in San Francisco.

Not long after Corey Lee, Thomas Keller’s wunderkind chef de cuisine at the French Laundry, left to open his own place, San Francisco’s food critics were waiting hungrily for the debut of Benu, which finally opened in August. Despite the high-altitude expectations and prices (the 12-course menu is $160), the response has been impressive. Michael Bauer, food critic at The San Francisco Chronicle, recently awarded the chef three and a half stars and noted a “beautifully crafted menu that looks eastward for inspiration.”

DINNER BY HESTON BLUMENTHAL : LONDON



The highly respected British chef Heston Blumenthal, winner of three Michelin stars at his Fat Duck restaurant, has been researching British recipes that date as far back as the 14th century. They will serve as inspiration for his new, much anticipated outpost, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, which is scheduled to open in London’s Mandarin Oriental hotel at the end of this month. While dining on dishes like hay-smoked mackerel with a lemon salad and gentleman’s relish, guests will be able to see into the kitchen through a floor-to-ceiling glass wall and watch its modern stainless steel pulley system, modeled on a 16th-century design for the Royal British Court’s kitchens.

M. WELLS : LONG ISLAND CITY, N.Y.



If there happens to be an uptick in passengers on the 7 train to Queens, it might be thanks to the word-of-mouth engendered by this retrofitted diner, overseen by Hugue Dufour, formerly chef at Au Pied de Cochon in Montreal, and his wife, Sarah Obraitis. When it opened in July, M. Wells served only breakfast; it is now open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with the intention of opening for dinner once a liquor license is obtained. For now, the menu is a glutinous celebration of Montreal and American dishes and ingredients like pickled pig’s tongue, escargots and bone marrow, and a much-loved breakfast sandwich.

MIRAZUR : MENTON, FRANCE



Last spring the popular and well-respected food blogger Pim Techamuanvivit, following a friend’s recommendation, tracked down this restaurant in a village in the French Riviera. Mauro Colagreco, the Argentine chef at Mirazur, paid his dues at the acclaimed, vegetable-friendly L’Arpège in Paris, so it’s no surprise that he grows some of the restaurant’s produce on the premises. In 2009, he was named Chef of the Year by Gault-Millau, becoming the first non-French chef to be given that title. Ms. Techamuanvivit raved in her blog entry about her meal there: “I still dream of the impossibly sweet red prawn, enrobed by ribbons of fresh young asparagus, borage and wild garlic blossoms and a drizzle of buttery Ligurian olive oil.”

MOMOFUKU : SYDNEY



In just a few years, the chef David Chang has come to be a major force on the New York scene, as he’s expanded his Momofuku empire to include five restaurants. So the foodie gossip mills started churning when he recently announced that he will be opening his first restaurant outside New York: a Momofuku outlet in Sydney’s Star City casino. It will develop its own menu, limited to “the abundance of Australia,” he wrote in an e-mail. “We will try not to import anything except some wine and Japanese products like shoyu,” he added, referring to a type of soy sauce. Mr. Chang will trade kitchen duties with Peter Serpico, the chef at Ko, the high-end Momofuku branch in downtown Manhattan.

RESTAURANT ANDRÉ : SINGAPORE

Andre Chiang dresses oysters at Restaurant Andre in Singapore.

Only a few weeks after the October opening of Restaurant Andre, in Singapore’s lively Chinatown district, the chef Andre Chiang is wowing even the city’s most critical gourmands with French-inspired dishes like braised eggplant with cockscombs and duck tongue. Having spent 14 years training in France at some of the country’s most revered destination restaurants, Mr. Chiang has finally found a place to come into his own.

RESTAURANTE GARZON : GARZON, URUGUAY



If you happen to be as obsessed with grilling meat — and have as powerful a personality — as the Argentine chef Francis Mallmann, you can manage to pioneer a remote spot like the Uruguayan village of Garzon on your own. A few years ago he left the resort of José Ignacio, bought a chunk of Garzon and built a five-room hotel and restaurant that debuted in 2004 and has attracted the jet set to that dusty town ever since.

TICKETS : BARCELONA, SPAIN



Ferran Adrià has not abandoned his cultish fans. Not long after he announced that he would close El Bulli, his wildly acclaimed restaurant, in 2012, he and his brother, Albert, signed on with the chefs who own the landmark Spanish seafood restaurant Rías de Galicia. This month, the team plans to open a contemporary tapas bar called Tickets, as well as a cocktail bar, in the Parallel neighborhood. Tickets will be far less formal than El Bulli, though its food and space will embrace a sense of the theatrical, with “stages” set up throughout the restaurant. At one, classic seafood tapas, like red shrimps from Costa Brava and razor shells from Galicia, will be showcased; at another, more-experimental small plates will star, like artichokes with smoked Idiazábal cheese serum.

WILLOWS INN : LUMMI ISLAND, WASH.



Willows Inn, on the tiny San Juan island of Lummi, is about two hours from Seattle by car and ferry. Yet it is about to become a destination restaurant, thanks to its new chef, Blaine Wetzel. The 24-year-old, formerly the protégé of Rene Redzepi at Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant that was ranked the “best restaurant in the world” for 2010 by S. Pellegrino, took over the kitchen at Willows last year. The restaurant itself reopens in February; expect a menu with an obsessive focus on local ingredients, in the style of Noma. Since he was hired, Mr. Wetzel has been working with a farmer and an urchin diver who work solely for him.

Travel

Forget Rootable Kenneally, forget Mark Arbib, bugger Rob Oakeshott.. It's FREE BOOKS at Elizabeths's!

Last Monday: More people at the closing of Elizabeth's 'Old' Bookshop at 197 King Street, Newtown than voted for the NSW ALP.

Elizabeth's 'New' Bookshop NOW OPEN at 257 King Street (next to Franklins Supermarket and near the Dendy Cinema) 7 days a week.

Elizabeth's Bookshop bags Travel the World... As Dean Martin said "keep those cards and letters coming in, folks..."

Sapporo, Japan

Elizabeth's Bookshop bag on the Bullet Train just before the Earthquake

994 metres above sea level in Japan


Camden Markets London

Business Class Emirates Perth - Dubai

Pretending to be Louis Vuitton

Hanging out at Foyles Bookshop, Charing Cross Road, London

Hold History in your hands... The original handwritten Errata to Winston Churchill's History of World War II

Churchill's THE SECOND WORLD WAR with the ORIGINAL handwritten Errata and Corrigenda

Complete 6 volume set of First Editions, containing 5 sheets (17.5 x 7 cms) of ink and pencil Corrigenda, corresponding exactly to the printed Corrigenda that appear in Vol I after p.610
Attributed by the Chuchill Archives centre to Edward Marsh, Winston's literary assistant on this project.

Two cheers for Oxfam Bookshops

@OxfamScotland Oxfam Scotland

For everyone in Glasgow who missed Borders- did you know oxfam now have a bookshop at royal exchnage square?

 

How wonderful! Another nail in the coffin of rent-paying, staff-paying independent bookshops.

How to hack in to the New York Times Square video screens...

Hacker with iPhone take over NY Times Square screens

Hacker with iPhone take over Times Square screens
Sunday, March 13, 2011

"The way it works is pretty simple: plug in my transmitter into the headphone minijack of an iphone 4 and play back any video clip. you can play it through the ipod feature or through the camera roll. the transmitter instantly sends the video signal to the video repeater and the video repeater overrides any video screen that it's being held next to. it doesn't matter what shape or size the hacked screen is because the hack video will simply keep its correct dimensions and the rest of the hacked space will stay black.

i chose times square for my demo because it has lots of video screens to try it on. it is also one of the most monitored and secured areas in new york city and that made it that much more fun :). you can see in my video that the repeater is pretty powerful but the signal is not very stable yet. i'm working on that. i will post a new video later this week explaining how i made this prototype."

http://www.alexandrosmaragos.com/2011/03/hacker-in-times-square.html