One of the bright spots in my journey last week was the fact that after my meeting in Portland, I had about an hour and a half to kill until I had to be at the airport- just enough time to make a pit stop at Powell’s!

Powell’s is a gigantic bookstore in Portland specializing in used, rare and out of print books- basically, a West Coast version of The Strand.  I have heard more about Powell’s than anything else in Portland- whether it was excessively dramatic sighs of glee from my friend Elizabeth, who made weekly treks there while she was a student in Oregon, or my dad, who I’ve NEVER heard get excited about a bookstore.  I was pretty excited to go, even if I just had an hour to explore.

Obviously, I wanted to wander around and buy everything.  However, since Mike and I put ourselves on a bit of a book diet recently, I was good and only bought two things- Travels in Hyperreality, an out of print book of essays by Umberto Eco (love), and a calendar featuring old pictures of people in lines.

However, while I wandered I took pictures of books that reminded me of friends and family.  So, I present you with crappy iPhone pictures of books I didn’t buy but would if I had an unlimited budget (and my own library).  (Disclaimer: this list is not in order of importance, so don’t feel left out if I didn’t include you, these were just books that jumped out at me during my 75 minutes of bliss.)

For Nugget, who also took way too many classes centered around this book (and others like it) in college:

For Rita, who wishes she was somewhere that looked like this:

For Derek, who loves a Famous Star almost too much:

For Anne, because, well, she is:

For my mom, who made me do way too many book reports on this book because somebody we’re related to was friends with Ishi:

For me, because it’s still my favorite:

For Jimmy, because honestly, wtf?

For Mary, because this is such an apt description of us:

And this last one isn’t for anybody in particular, but I squeed a little when I saw that it was in the “Historical/Rare” Collection: