We took a ‘day off’ yesterday to get out of the house and away from our computers. (That’s the official story.) I had a plan to drive down through Scotts Valley, a part of the Bay Area, seen on TV weather maps, that we’ve never visited, or even driven through. It’s north and just a bit west of Santa Cruz, and includes neighborhoods like Ben Lomond and Bonny Doon that people we know, or have read, once lived in.
Along the way, I wanted to visit Kepler Books, one of the major bookstores in the Bay Area and one which I had never, in the 11 years we’ve lived in Oakland, visited. (It’s an hour’s drive south from us.) So we drove across the 84 bridge — which I’d driven been across, another first — and into the rather lush neighborhoods of Atherton and Menlo Park, just north of Stanford.
(In the middle of this drive, my sister in Simi Valley called to tell me that she are her husband are moving to Philadelphia early next year. She has a son who settled there. And so many things she doesn’t like about California. I didn’t ask.)
We found Kepler’s Books and parked in the free underground parking lot. It’s an impressive bookstore, fairly large and not full of games like a B&N. I value a bookstore to the extent that it stocks books I have not already heard of, via PW or reviews or FB advertisements. In this case I saw several, even many, such books that I was tempted to buy — mostly in the science section. Its science fiction section was decent, with several titles by Asimov and Clarke and Heinlein and Wolfe… but no Silverberg, something I always check. It had separate sections for horror, fantasy, and ‘romantasy’.
Duty-bound to buy at least one book at any independent bookstore I visit, I bought two. First, the new novel by Audrey Niffenegger, LIFE OUT OF ORDER — because it was a signed first edition. (She must have visited the store and signed books.) I wasn’t sure I needed to buy this sequel to THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE, which I read and enjoyed some 20 years ago, but that it was a signed first edition pushed me over. Second, in the science section, something called THE SHORTEST HISTORY OF REALITY, by Geraint F. Lewis, with a foreword by the Veritasium guy Derek Muller, a trade paperback, since I am always interested in the big takes on reality. It turns out there is a whole series of books from the same publisher called “The Shortest History” of this or that. Somewhat like that endless series of short books from Oxford called “A Very Short Introduction.”
And then we drove west, on the 84, toward Woodside. I had thought from there we would go south on the 35, switch to the 9, and drive through those towns in Scotts Valley.
But it was nearing lunchtime, and I remembered the place we’d had lunch 10 or 12 years ago at the recommendation of our peninsula realtor, Denise Laugerson, called The Village Pub, in Woodside. I remembered the territory enough to find the place again. It’s a high-end, one-Michelin Star, restaurant. Beautiful, elegant, the highest standards of service. Prix Fix menu, even for lunch. Pricey. But worth it, we think, once in a while.
And then, we drove north on the 35 highway, “Skyline Blvd”, rather than south toward Scotts Valley. Maybe another time. A windy road, with only brief glances of the ocean to the west, until we met the 92 freeway, coming from Half Moon Valley, going east across the 92 bridge and back home.
