Reading weekly city newspapers with their restaurant reviews and blurbs about movies, music, and books is one of my favorite leisure activities. What I really like best is reading the long and short restaurant reviews that are split up into neighborhoods. It helps me keep track of my city and what’s new and what has changed. A lot has really changed recently and I live in the country now but it is still interesting to me to see where I could go eat if I still lived in the city. I always check out the neighborhoods I lived in the most.
If I lived in the city still I would want to live in the last neighborhood I lived in which is the Scandinavian center. I am Scandinavian and though I grew up in rural areas in the Midwest, I still feel the most at home in that part of the city with it’s mix of ages and shops that sell Lutefisk and European chocolates. I have occasionally used the weeklies to pick a restaurant from their reviews and I wasn’t disappointed. Another thing I keep up on in the weekly newspapers is the list of readings and author appearances. I used to go to my favorite city bookstore to see free readings whenever I could.
The newspapers also review a book now and then and I always read the book reviews too. I used to actually use those book reviews to see if I might buy something new at my favorite bookstores in the city. The economy has been in a slump of late so unfortunately this landmark bookstore I mentioned may be moving or going out of business. I wish that I could go support them by buying books but with where I live it’s not possible anymore. They gave me a lot of good memories of some of my favorite authors.
I read a lot and I have tried to review a book or two myself in the past. My Mom used to make me do that with the books I read when I was a kid. I didn’t enjoy it as much as reading, but she thought it would be good for me as a writer. It fell apart kind of fast because it wasn’t really comfortable for me. Even though a lot of it is personal opinion I am still glad that folks out there do review books and publish those reviews in the free weeklies.