music and books

Quick update:
Saturday we went to a Roda de Samba with Raquel, who is one of Heidi's friends and works with juvenile delinquents (or jovens presas in Portuguese, which is so much nicer sounding). I loved it, the barzinho was in a sort of higher-class area full of rich brasilian hipsters, hehe, but it itself was really simple and super tiny, with a wide variety of people there, old and young. The band that played goes every saturday from 4 to 8pm, and it's the music that draws people, because whie the band is relatively young their style of samba is classic and beautiful. They play mostly songs of their own composition but they also play classics from famous Sambistas who are these old cute men who go there a lot (there were 3 while we were there) and are very respected and often jump in fo a few of their old songs. Somewhat needless to say, the music was fabulous.
A "roda" means that the group, which in this case had 6 people, sits in a circle while the audience is just sort of around them. Hardly anyone was sitting down, and there was a fair amount of dancing going on. Samba-ing is incredibly hard and only some people can do it, but when they can my god it's gorgeous to see.
We went afterwards and visited and old used bookstore of a friend of Raquel's on Avenida Paulista, which is the nicest most famous avenue in the city. It was in an apartment and wasn't at all advertised, you just had to know it was there. There were all sorts of things, books in tons of languages (I bought one in English), music books, travel books, textbooks, there were records and to encyclopeadias, hehe. We spent a long time there, just absorbing the old book smell and enjoying it. =] It was really cute and nice.Speaking of books I'm reading right now a book by Margaret Atwood abon the subject of writing. It's really great, I'm loving it. Found it at Heidi's and hasn't proved to be what I thought it'd be at all, but in fact much much better. Of course I forget the name of it, but hey I remembered the author of ththe other book-- Woman on the Edge of Time is by Marge Pierce. Or Piercy. Lord. When I get old I'll either never notice a difference or be wholly senile and won't remember a thing.
Oh also I'm reading a bit of Flannery O'Conner here and there but am having a hard time getting through most of it and so mainly I quit and turn back to one of the 8 other books by my bed. Hehee.
So yep. There's always more to say but that's what you'll get for now. (Pap hope that was enough paragraph breaks. I tried by my mind doesn't think in paragraphs. hehee.)