Bookstores, reading, data
from the Department of Data at The Washington Post, bad news and some good news about bookstores and reading.
Barnes & Noble redesigning
Different designs for different stores, and an emphasis on books. I haven’t seen anything like this at our nearby Barnes & Noble, which still teems with tchotchkes and whatnot, especially at the registers.
Recently updated
A second bookstore behind a bookstore.
Drugs, groceries, books
Home of Three Lives & Company.
Book chain
I like this story from Southampton, England: “Human chain move thousands of books into new October Books store.”
Lost bookstores
From The New York Times, a tour in photographs: “Remembrance of Bookstores Past.”
Gotham Book Mart
51 West 47th Street, c. 1939—1941.
New England Mobile Book Fair
A belated goodbye: I learned by chance yesterday that the New England Mobile Book Fair closed last August.
The joys of browsing
What’s with the Strand?
According to The Baffler, Nancy Bass Wyden, the Strand’s owner, bought “between $3 million and almost $7.9 million” of assorted stocks between April and September. Meanwhile, employees (those who hadn’t been laid off) went without adequate PPE and cleaning supplies.
“Bookstores”
Fran Lebowitz, in the documentary film The Booksellers (dir. D.W. Young, 2019): “You know what they used to call independent bookstores? Bookstores.”
Old and new bookmarks
The old one, a DO-NOT-USE-AS-BOOKMARK bookmark, made it through five years of the Four Seasons Reading Club. The new one is a legit bookmark, from Three Lives & Company.
More on getting books
Buying and borrowing in a pandemic.
Support your local or not-so-local independent bookstore
Three Lives & Co. and other bookstores.
Andreas Brown (1933–2020)
A bibliophile since childhood who bought the revered Gotham Book Mart in Midtown Manhattan from its idiosyncratic founder, Frances Steloff, and kept it alive as a frowzy literary shrine for four more decades.”
The Booksellers
A new documentary about antiquarian booksellers.
Sluggo in the library
He feels he’s not smart enough.
Books as armor
I was accumulating books as armor, as protection, as certification that I belonged in the academic world I aspired to enter. I didn’t wear my armor: it just sat on shelves at home, where it could come in handy as needed.
Saving Barnes & Noble
The New York Times profiles James Daunt, founder of Daunt Books and managing director of the Waterstones bookstore chain. He is soon to leave London for New York to serve as the new chief executive at Barnes & Noble.
Michael Seidenberg (1954–2019)
Michael Seidenberg was the proprietor of Brazenhead Books, a bookstore with several incarnations, the most famous of which was a Manhattan apartment.
B & N, “final bastion of hope”?
Not Barnes & Noble but an an independent bookstore, one in which the emphasis is on books, not toys, not games, not buy-one-get-one-free cookies.
Three Lives & Co. on the sidewalk
A great bookstore, selling from the sidewalk while awaiting approval to reopen after structural repairs.
A bookstore in the Bronx
Tomorrow is Independent Bookstore Day. And in The Bronx it’s opening day for a new independent bookstore, The Lit. Bar.
Barnes & Noble & the future
“It’s in the interest of the book business for Barnes & Noble not just to survive but to thrive.”
Things to do in the Valley
The San Fernando Valley, that is. Two bookstores, five restaurants.
Used-book-store score
Stefan Zweig’s Balzac bio, just $3.25.
Ann Patchett’s favorite bookstores
I am happy to see the Corner Bookstore and Three Lives & Company among her recommendations.
VKNY
Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several Short Sentences About Writing, popular in a NY bookstore.
Bookstore-less Bronx
The Bronx is about to lose a Barnes & Noble, the borough’s lone general-interest bookstore.
Gotham tumblr
A tumblr devoted to the inventory of Manhattan’s defunct Gotham Book Mart.