Trapped in Chicago Bookstore

Hotel room view, across Grant Park towards the Field Museum, Aquarium, etc.

When I booked this hotel, across the street from the Chicago Hilton Hotel, the AAR's main annual meeting venue, I had no idea that it was only a block from one of Chicago's Powell's bookstores. M. and I are in deep trouble.

I restricted myself to just two purchases today: Anna Reid's The Shaman's Coat: A Native History of Siberia and Giorgia Geddes' Nichivo: Tales from the Russian Front 1941-43. Both count as "research." (Those are Amazon links, but you can search Powells' inventory through Advanced Book Exchange.)

And given the heavy emphasis on book-buying at AAR, I still do not understand why someone does not set up a "pack-and-ship" booth in the exhibit hall!

The coffee shops are filling up too: "My dissertation advisor thinks I should go for publication, so he's being real hard on me."

Good luck with that.

Here is a spooky story, worthy of Fate magazine. Political writer (and Orthodox Christian) Rod Dreher has his own ghost-story post.