Fun fact: one time when I was showing a friend around Paris, we stopped in at Shakespeare & Co (as you do, of course). I decided that, since it was St. Patrick’s Day, it would be fitting to buy Ulysses in honor of its Irish writer, and, of course, for the fact that if it weren’t for Sylvia Beach and her shop, it wouldn’t have been published at all.

The guy who stamped my book at check-out only had a vague idea what I was talking about when I was telling him why I was buying it. Sigh.