Dawn Rennert, who blogs at She Is Too Find of Books ... and often highlights interesting bookstores, invited me to do a guest post about the French shops I visited in Paris last year. She posted it today -- and it looks great. She must be a designer in real life.

Meanwhile, my daughter, who was studying in Paris for the fall semester, returned safely on Monday. Whew! She brought me this book, about Baltimorean Sylvia Beach, who ran a Left Bank bookstore and befriended many of the great writers living in Paris between the wars. Oh, one other note: she was the original publisher of Joyce's Ulysses! A remarkable woman. I can't wait to read the book.

By the way, I'd like to expand the map of favorite bookstores that we created last summer on Read Street -- you can find it in the right rail of the homepage. With your help, we listed more than 150 U.S. stores, and the map has been viewed more than 35,000 times! Now we're going worldwide. I've added several Parisian stores to the map already, but would like to hear your favorites from around the world. Post a comment and I'll add them to the map.