Curbside Reading

Post Sunday lunch ritual with my mother and tired from my Daylight Savings time traveling. Decided to have a little pick-me-up at Peet's on Larchmont. The place was littered with readers left and ride. While inside sipping my iced latte I couldn't help but notice Gabrielle. She had scooted one of the iron chairs away from the tables and parked it by the curb next to a parking meter. Gabrielle enjoys reading in public, especially at Larchmont, because it's a pleasant little neighbourhood. She can pick up a book and escape for a few hours in the sunlight. She is reading Chicago by Alaa Al Aswany and Farouk Abdel Wahab. It's a fictional work about Egyptian immigrants in a post 9/11 Chicago.

Gabrielle had never heard about this book but happened to notice the cover in the library (or book store, I can't recall). She read the first few paragraphs and it seemed compelling enough to give it a go. Gabrielle shares that she tends to read the first paragraphs and this helps her decide whether or not the book is for her.


She is a big fan of fiction - great fiction. As an English Lit major she's read so many classics but One Hundred Years of Solitude was (and is) one of her all time favourite books. She's enjoyed the classic both as a teenager and as an adult. Other faves? Any book by Isabel Allende. She's read them all! When she was even younger she enjoyed books like The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach.

If she were to write a book of her own it would be about displacement. "We're all immigrants in this country and I feel that everyone experiences displacement and trying to find their sense of home."


If you could move to any city and write about it, where would you run off to and why?