Dear Adam Gopnik, Thank You.

My newest book-I-bring-everywhere, the beautifully written Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik, is beginning to emotionally ready me for my quickly approaching move to Europe. Gopink -- a canadian writer living with his wife and young son in Paris and journaling the extraordinary culture shock experience for The New Yorker -- writes with the sense of journeys past: slenderly nostalgic, seriously introspective and entirely honest. Gopnik is caught exploring the mess of grey areas between visiting Paris, living in Paris, and falling in love with Paris.

Here's a taste:

There are two kind of travelers. There is the kind who goes to see what there is to see and sees it, and the kind who has an image in his head and goes out to accomplish it. The first visitor has an easier time, but I think the second visiter sees more. He is constantly comparing what he sees to what he wants, so he sees with his mind, and maybe even with his heart, or tries to. If his peripheral vision gets diminished -- so that he quite literally sometimes can't see what's coming at him from the suburbs of the place he looks at -- his struggle to adjust the country he looks at to the country he has inside him at least keeps him looking. It sometimes blurs, and sometimes sharpens, his eye. My head was filled with pictures of Paris, mostly black and white, and I wanted to be in them.

It's all making me feel quite safe and in good company. Thank you, Adam.