Visiting Chestertown, Maryland

Last week I drove to historic Chestertown to talk about The Story of Ain’t with a nonfiction reading group at the Kent County Library. It was the best! (Exclamation point completely sincere, by the way.) Chestertown looks a bit like Old Town, Alexandria, with beautifully preserved eighteenth and nineteenth century houses. The reading group was excellent, smart, all male—though the session with me was open to the public and a number of women attended. The reading group members were all retired professionals, as far as I could tell, and they were really thoughtful readers. And very serious too: Another book they had read recently, they told me, was called On Certainty. Not the Wittgenstein book, I don’t think. Afterwards, I went to lunch with several of the members and learned that the guy who recommended my book to the group had bought his copy in Old Town at Hooray for Books! (This exclamation point is, in fact, part of the store’s name.) What a great experience it was to connect with a group of people who had just read my book. Very fun. I especially liked this sign. Apparently it had been on the sidewalk for a few days.