Spring Cleaning, Spring Reading

April 3, 2013, Washington, DC:  Last winter, I published a post called Writing About Place: A Reading List where I planned to keep tabs on books and articles that spoke to the power of place. The idea was to create a resource of conversations about neighborhood history, urban studies, compelling travel writing -- any content in which location is a living, breathing and central character rather than an afterthought or a convenient backdrop. It recently occurred to me that I haven’t done a good job at keeping up the list, let alone encouraging other neighborhood nomads to add their suggestions. So I went back into the Comments section earlier today to freshen it up and add some works to the tally. I invite you to do the same-- if you've read something that hits the nail on the head in describing your neighborhood, your hometown, someplace you've traveled, or the overall power of place, share it with the rest of us by clicking here. Pictured above: Some bookshops along the way... Clockwise from top left: Riverby Books on Capitol Hill, DC; The Depot in Mill Valley, CA; Subterranean Books in the Delmar Loop, St. Louis; Inquiring Mind Bookstore in Saugerties, NY; Random Row Books in Charlottesville, VA; Atlantis Books in Oia, Santorini.