Salon suggests you trazzle(?) to these bookstores.

Salon's travel section calls itself The Trazzler. What that means, I'm not sure. It sounds like the illegitimate language lovechild of Snoop Dogg.

There's a soft serve ice cream* place nearby where I live. They mix their soft serve--your choice of flavor--with tasty tidbits (cookies, candy, diabetes chunks, etc.) and call it a Razzle. Many nights I've stayed awake wondering what Razzle means--that it has to be a hybrid word, spliced together with two ice cream-associated words (like ice cream and sprinkles become crinkles--maybe?), yet nothing makes sense. Razzles aren't raspberry flavored. Nothing dazzles. It's not even rad, and it doesn't razz me in some sugar-induced anthropomorphic ice cream cone moment. When I once asked the 16 or 17 year old girl working behind the counter what Razzle actually means, she said "It's ice cream mixed with cookies and candies and stuff."

Yeah. That works, too.

Annnnywho, Salon's Trazzler came out with their list of The World's Most Inspiring Bookstores. What makes them inspiring is a matter for debate. For instance, will I be inspired to eat soft serve ice cream if I visit these bookstores? Dubious. That kind of kills the whole "most inspiring" argument right there. And none of these bookstores are even run by Snoop Dogg, which seems like a huge missed opportunity.



I don't know who Razzmatazz is. Some band out of the midwest I think. Based solely on the way they appear, possibly a cover band for Chicago, Kansas, or some other 1970s geographically-named soft rock band.

*To say soft serve ice cream is a national disappointment is an understatement. More to the point, it's an oxymoron. Ice cream is supposed to be hard because of a key word subtly inserted into its name: ice. Soft serve ice cream isn't ice cream at all. I'm not even sure if it qualifies as food. It's like calling individual slices of pre-wrapped American Cheese Product cheese or Maria Shriver's chin line delicate.