Now this sounds exciting. It is a truth universally acknowledged that London, for all its riches, lacks a truly good bookshop. The only great physical bookshop in England is Blackwell’s in Oxford. London doesn’t have any equivalent (the giant Waterstones in Piccadilly is big, but it has all the wrong books). So the London Review of Books may be on to something: “It does not sell How to Succeed manuals, has no truck with discounting, and refuses to dally with two-for-the-price-of-one offers. There are no feng shui books either. Instead its shelves are packed with one copy — in some cases two — of some of the finest titles in print, selected by a formidable team of critics.”
Now Cody’s in Berkeley and Keplers in Menlo Park have the feng shui but all the right books as well. So the two aren’t mutually exclusive. I can’t wait to check out the LRB shop soon.
The continued arrogance of investment banks like Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch after the $1.4 billion settlement is jaw-dropping. So plaudits go to SEC chairman William Donaldson for telling Morgan Stanley CEO Phil Purcell he had a “disturbing and misguided perspective” on the settlement. And New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer was on the money telling Merrill’s Stan O’Neal, “If I were you, I would reflect as to what your company did and what we have alleged about your company. It committed fraud. That is not risk.”