More intimate than an anthology, more wide-ranging than a journal, a commonplace book is the magpie reader's secret cache. Here is a very personal treasury of quotations, poems, and anecdotes copied down over a lifetime of reading; they range from the Vicomte Maudit's Kentucky breakfast (whiskey, a steak, and a dog - to eat the steak) to an angry small boy's letter to his father in second-century Rome. And here, too, commenting on them and tying them together, is a garland of stories from the author's own life, some humorous and some poignant, that echo and are echoed by her collected quotations. All these are gathered together in a charmingly fanciful Eden, the interior garden of one reader's imagination in which her characters meet and mingle. Personal, moving, and often hilarious, this is a book to return to again and again. Read Less