A few months ago I blogged about a children’s book that I absolutely love and couldn’t more highly recommend to all ages. Well now it is time to recommend the author of that book to everyone.

Lesley M. M. Blume could quite possibly be the most delightful human being on the planet. Her new book is called Let’s Bring Back: An Encyclopedia of Forgotten-Yet-Delightful, Chic, Useful, Curious, and Otherwise Commendable Things from Times Gone By. This books contains, in its very aesthetically pleasing cover of brown and mint green, a veritable smorgasbord of fun knowledge.  It is laid out like a dictionary, which happens to be one of my most favorite things. The book starts out with Acquaintance and ends with Zinc Bar.

We have had this delightful little book sitting at the front desk so whenever I have a moment I often reach for it to learn something maybe not new but fun. My personal favorite is Hotel Living, which looks a little something like this:

Hotel Living: This used to be a common practice in hotels of grandeur and disrepute; you would simply move into town and “take rooms.” One advantage to hotel living: If you die there, you’re more likely to be found in a timely manner.

Some Famous People Who Died in Their Hotel Digs

Oscar Wilde, in a small, frowsy room at the Hotel d’Alsace in Paris. His reported last words: “I am dying as I have lived: beyond my means.” (Other sources claim that he utterd, “Either those curtains go, or I do.”)

Dorothy Parker, at the Volney Hotel in New York City. Ironically, in earlier years, she love to ridicule the culture of old hotel-dwelling ladies. The worst part: After Parker was cremated, no one collected the ashes, and her urn was stored in her lawyer’s metal file cabinet for fifteen years before being properly interred.

Eugene O’Neill, in room  at the Sheraton Hotel in Boston. The playwright’s reported last words: “I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room-GD it, died in a hotel room.”

So that is a little teaser of the clever wit (which is also explained in the book) which this book is made of. I would love to receive this book as a gift and have already given it as a gift. -Ellen

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