Brianna D'Estries is a third-year Legal Studies student at UC Berkeley who has helped at the shop since early 2017.  Born in California, she was educated at a French International School, where she became fluent in the language (her French mother also helped!). Brianna loves books of lyric poetry and heady theory, and so the book she chose as part of our ongoing series [see others here!] came as no surprise.  Thanks, Brianna!

1. What book would you recommend?
 La Poétique de Rêverie by Gaston Bachelard. A friend of mine from London picked this up for me when we were exploring Moe’s and described it as “a fantastic book”. Right on the money.

2.What edition would you recommend?
 The Presses Universitaires de France 1971 edition.

•slightly coarse but simultaneously smooth paper (paradoxical paper?)
•smells like it’s lived on a couple of dusty bookshelves
•the deep green and cream combo remind me of plastic camping thermoses from the late 60s

3.A place you'd recommend to read it?
A bench along the walking path at the Berkeley Marina. I often take my bike up to the marina when I’m upset or stressed — it’s the only place where I feel I can really sit and think clearly, and it’s the best spot in town to sit uninterrupted for hours.

4.What to eat/drink while reading it?
A pour-over coffee and blueberry scone from Timeless Coffee in Berkeley.

5.What would recommend listening to while reading it?
“In a Sentimental Mood” by Duke Ellington and John Coltraine. Or just put Dizzy Gillespie on shuffle. Or both.

6.What bag would you carry it in?
My trusty, super-duper waterproof roll-top backpack of course!

7.What library would you check it out from?
The Bodleian Library at Oxford University.