The neighborhood of Ravenna in Seattle is named after a town in Italy. If I were to imagine what Italian neighborhoods look like, Seattle’s Ravenna might be more akin to Italy than a typical American suburban neighborhood. Just navigating the sidewalks in Ravenna takes some work, because the property owners are keen on cottage gardens, large shrubs, and flowering fauna that encroach upon the walk, both from the property owner’s side and the city’s median that abuts the street.

Then there are the trees. I have to duck my head often walking down 35th street ― I’m guessing a 5 to 7 percent grade ― to avoid getting bonked by a branch while I head for University Village. Ravenna is known to be the home for lots of University of Washington professors, staff and students. It’s where we rented our place for the month, based on the location near the campus and its reasonable price.

The area is known for its Craftsman-era Bungalow homes. The Bungalow was a reaction to the fussiness of Victorian architecture. The Bungalow style sported clean, simple lines and was characterized by deep eaves and huge front porches. Almost all have stairs leading to the main front door. The Bungalows are dotted with a fair number of neighboring Tudor-style homes as well. All this construction was around 1915 to 1925 or so. Can you imagine now how many people have tried to add on and modernize these places over the years?

As I walk, I laugh at some of the add-ons, mismatching the original architecture to such a degree that they resemble lean-tos. Dormers look as if they have been purchased from an old Sears catalog. Hippie huts attach themselves to original red brick, and handyman clapboards reflect an after-market insensitivity, joining new vertical siding against the original horizontal boards.

I’m convinced the majority of these houses are occupied by tenants. Of those, I would count many as college students. I spy a few young people peering into computer screens with their dormer windows open (probably catching up on Tumblr postings), but my attention is diverted to the overwhelming evidence proving that yards are overgrown to the point of obstruction. I doubt a resident property owner would concede to a purple hibiscus hiding his own front door. However, a college student who’s late to Tumblr would probably ignore the plant quickly on the way to an electrical outlet.

I look for electrical outlets, too, but at University Village, down the hill 1.3 miles from our rented studio. I find them at Starbucks and Barnes & Noble, where I’ve taken to setting up my office for daily expansion of the Epylon Empire. And between Epylon conquests, I throw a few stones of intellectual capital into the foundation of Pretty Road Press as a substitute for lunch. I hear that some books from Pretty Road Press have been embraced fondly by the hospital community, including John Muir in San Francisco, Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and the University of California, San Diego. Hopefully, they’re being bought for inspiration, not “mending” as hospitals are want to do.

Shame on me for wandering off the clock for a long lunch at the bookstore, where I have dropped two $20 bills on books that I hope would make me a better publisher. I seriously think I should work at a bookstore for a while to get acquainted with what people are buying, what’s hot in the market, and the idiosyncrasies of book store retailing. Twice I have returned to the chain store in the evening to hear authors talk about their books. The Barnes and Nobel at University Village boasts its own author’s stage, and books (pun intended) no less than one or two authors a day to come read, answer questions and sign their work.

As the audience assembles for each visiting author, it’s clear that the groupies – about 40 or so a night – resemble the genre of the author’s work. An author of horror stories attracted a group of goth-dressed youth and nerdly dungeons-and-dragons bachelors, whereas Seattle author Ivan Doig attracted a predominately gray-haired audience of classic book lovers when he came to talk about Work Song, a story set in 1919 around the copper mining of Butte, Montana, just about the same time they were building the Bungalows in Revenna. Don’t we wonder if some of the original Bungalow children were some of Mr. Doig’s groupies?

I wouldn’t classify myself as a groupie, because I had never heard of Ivan Doig before last week when I saw his picture in the Barnes and Noble window. But because I am an aspiring publisher, I thought I should support authors when they come out to a bookstore. Having seen the horror-story writer the night before at 7:30, I resolved to attend the elderly Mr. Doig’s event as well.

I dragged my dear wife down to the shopping center, enticing her with the promise of wine and appetizers before the book event. She did not want to sit through the reading, lecture, and questions. She brought her own book, and was all set to read alone as a diversion. We dined at Boom, a Japanese restaurant, whose small plates I would recommend as four and a half stars, a most favorable rating for a mall establishment.

At 7:28 I paid the check, knowing the event the night before started late. But as I arrived at Mr. Doig’s show, it was clear he was well into a wrap.

I whispered to the lady next to me, “Did he just start?”

“No, he’s almost done.”

The words had started flowing at 7 p.m., not 7:30, but he answered more questions under my watch, and I was impressed, he, like me, having favored newspapering as an early career.

So I bought the book. The first 15 pages were cruel boredom, but I persevered, and am now engrossed in a story that pits union mine workers against the heavy handed Anaconda Mining Company. The story develops with the usual dose of sexual tension between the main character and the keeper of a boardinghouse. We’ll see how all that tension plays out when I move on past page 112.

So far I’ve read three books since I arrived in Washington’s biggest city on July 1. Samatha Bee’s book was a memoir of her growing up, before she became a correspondent on the John Daily Show on the Comedy channel. Let’s just say that Samantha’s family was dysfunctional. Maybe that’s why she turned out to be so funny, her way of coping. As a youngster, she was an accomplice to multiple auto thefts while she lectured her parents on the dangers of drugs. She enjoyed ample geriatric sex and witchcraft before settling in with Jason to rear two kids in what appears to be a fully functioning family today.

When my mind is not at work in Seattle, my legs are. The bike is getting a pounding. My yellow Felt’s wheels traveled 40 miles this weekend, in a stretch from the water locks in the neighborhood of Ballard to the dreadful small storefronts of Kenmore. Kenmore sits at the north end of Lake Washington, where I thought I would find a delightful pub to quench my thirst, but found nothing more than a sorry bowling alley and a cement plant. OK, an unusual parking lot for sea planes caught my eye along the water, but I was not looking for eye candy, it was my mouth that was aching for refreshment on Sunday evening.

It was better on the Ballard side, where earlier in the day the community was celebrating its annual Seafood Festival. I saw little seafood, so I landed in a nice tavern called HighLife, one of several local establishments that would have been appealing as a night spot.

However, I am saving an evening for another book event, close to Ravenna to support the neighborhood bookstore. But as it would turn out some months later, no longer would such reservations be necessary. The bookstore, large and influential, would soon close, despite its proximity to Ravenna and a huge university.