Reading NOLA Style

I’m traveling for work most of this week, which allowed me to pop into one of my favorite book stores, The Maple Street Book Shop in New Orleans. The store is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and it was a favorite of Walker Percy. The New Orleans author has his own section featuring pictures of him shopping in the store. It’s a small store, as you can see below. Shelf space is at a premium, so they only stock the good ones. To the right of this picture, a FEMA trailer stands incongruously in a driveway. To the left is the Maple Street Children’s Book Store.

The buzz on the New Orleans book scene is the new James Lee Burke novel, Tin Roof Blow Down. The novel is the latest in Burke’s Dave Robichaux detective series. The book looks at the popular detective’s Hurricane Katrina experiences. The book has been getting some positive reviews (e.g., this review in the LA Times). I was trying to make it a point to buy the novel in New Orleans, but was sold out in the two book stores that I visited. Instead, I bought Burke’s story collection, Jesus Out to Sea.