Mostly we read

Loving research has gone into this literary fantasy of a hotel. Each room is decorated in homage to a well-known author, the dining room is the Table of Content, the halls are hung with photographs of authors, and there are busts of authors in nooks, on window ledges, and atop overspilling bookcases. 

The Woolf room is right out of Bloomsbury, with hand-painted designs on bookcase, dresser, and walls in imitation of Duncan Grant; with photographs of Virginia and places she loved, with a sun-hat like hers on a hatstand on a bookcase full of her books. Sue and I read bits of Room aloud to each other, and I wrote a letter to Virginia while Sue drew and painted. Dinners are served “family style,” at tables of ten. One of people at our table loves photography; we told him about Blipfoto and encouraged him to join. 

Wind sighed and moaned around the creaking eaves all day, waves smashed onto the beach, and with no news, TV, or internet, with nowhere to go and nothing to do, time entered another dimension. The main common room is at the top of the hotel, and everyone found their way there by mid-afternoon. Mostly we read. I finished the four books I’ve been reading in fits and starts and will have more to say about them anon.

Toward the end of the day the rain let up enough that we could go out to take pictures of the sunset. (Extra.)