The Beautiful Bookshops of New York
Or a true test of my willpower.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been on a book buying spree this year. It is probably because I have made it a point to visit a lot of charity shops in London, which always tend to have an interesting book or two as well as many independent book shops who always curate incredible collections within their stores that make it impossible to resist buying something.
When I visited New York last month, I visited a lot of the amazing bookshops the city has in store. Like in London, these bookshops had incredible collections, with books I had never heard of and now am yearning to pick up. While I did end up buying a few, I took pictures of all the ones I couldn’t bring back with me. So here are all the books I didn’t buy, that I have added to my ever-growing list of books I want to read, organised by bookstore.
The Centre for Fiction, Brooklyn
Everything about this store was wonderful. As you enter, you wonder whether to turn left or right, because bookshelves await you on either side. I loved that they had a pillar of staff recommendations, with each side of the pillar featuring recommendations from different individuals. I discovered quite a few books here that I had never heard of before.
‘Interpretations of Love’ is a debut novel by Jane Campbell and is about family secrets that all come out at an intimate wedding, which sounds deliciously thrilling.
‘The Bookshop: A History of American Bookstores’ by Evan Priss discusses the importance and role that bookshops have played in American cultural life. As someone who sees bookstores as absolute havens, where you can meet like minded people, have wholesome interactions that can stay with you forever and where you may pick up a book that could change you forever, I always want to read more about their formation and how different bookshops take different approaches to bookselling. I will be picking this one up as soon as I can.
‘After the Internet: Digital Networks between Capital and the Common’ by Tiziana Terranova is the kind of book I would like to read, but am not entirely sure I could. It is a collection of essays written between the mid 2000s to the late 2010s that bears witness to the transformation of the internet from a tool of communication to an ever present part of the “Corporate Platform Complex.” This sounded fascinating to me.
‘The Fertile Earth’ by Ruthvika Rao is set during a “tumultuous political landscape” in India and is a tale of friendship, love and resistance. I am on a mission to read more by Indian authors, particularly about eras in Indian history that I have very little knowledge about (of which there are many). Non-fiction certainly has its place in improving my understanding of Indian history, but the role that fiction plays is equally powerful in its ability to zoom in on a series of events through the lives of the characters in the book so it becomes a more involved experience.
‘Inside the Mirror’ by Parul Kapur won the AWP Prize for the Novel and is set in the 1950s, in an India that is a new country but is reeling from the effects of colonialism. We follow two sisters who are both artists who have to follow their dreams in secret, against the wishes of their father.
Published in 2019, ‘No One Prayed Over Their Graves’ is a book by National Book Award finalist Khaled Khalifa. Set in Syria, in a town near Aleppo, it tells a story of two friends who return to their hometown after a night out to find that a flood has wreaked death and destruction. It follows the characters in the aftermath.
‘Migratory Birds’ is an essay collection by Mexican author Mariana Oliver. The essays explore various types of migrations to understand what it means to move from one place to another, abandoning the familiarity and comfort of what we know.
‘Terrace Story’ by Hilary Leichter intrigued me because it reminded me of Narnia. A young family live in a small apartment and suddenly one day, they find that they have a terrace if they step through a closet.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Store, Central Park
We only had three and a half hours on one afternoon to finish our exploration of the Met, which left us with just enough time to have a very quick browse of the store, where of course I found some books of interest.
Astor is a name I have heard about since I watched the Titanic when I was eight or nine years old. JJ Astor IV was one of the passengers aboard the Titanic, and perished during her maiden voyage. I then came across it on the show ‘The Gilded Age’ where the Astors are depicted as gatekeepers within New York society and the poster family of “old money” who turned their noses up at the families with “new money” and made it difficult for them to integrate within New York high society circles. Funnily enough, the Astor family also came up during a history walking tour of The Strand in London - Two Temple Place (pictured below) was built by William Waldorf Astor who ran away from New York to London due to a some sort of scandal or conflict in New York society.
Overall then, it’s safe to say that the Astors were a very influential family for generations and have shaped parts of New York that remain that way to this very day. I am interested to understand how they ascended to the heights they did, the cultural influence they wielded as well as what led to their fall.
‘Diamonds and Deadlines: A Tale of Greed, Deceit and a Female Tycoon in the Gilded Age’ by Betsy Prioleau is something I would love to read because we still don’t hear enough about female tycoons in 2024, let alone in the late 1800s. This book is about Mrs Frank Leslie who ran America’s largest publishing house at the time. She was also known for turning her nose up at societal conventions (which were very demanding in that time period) giving her quite the reputation.
‘Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind’s Greatest Invention’ spans 7000 years taking us to the different cities that made a mark in history. It’s almost a way to time travel back to cities of the past and understand how they have influenced the cities of today. I am also very keen to see how persuasive his argument is - I don’t agree at the moment that cities are humankind’s greatest invention, but I am open to having my mind changed!
Albertine, Fifth Avenue
Albertine is home to the largest collection of French language books in the United States along with a gorgeous ceiling.
‘Watch Us Dance’ by Leila Slimani and translated by Sam Taylor is a story set in Morocco in 1968 of an interracial family that draws from Leila’s own family’s lived experiences. It is the second book in Leila Slimani’s series ‘In the Country of Others’ that looks at Moroccan life during and after World War Two. I am excited to pick this up and learn more about Morocco and its history.
‘The Postcard’ by Anne Berest is the story of the author found a postcard that enabled her to trace and find out what happened to her ancestors during the Holocaust. It covers how Anne finds out more about her grandparents and their lives in Paris during the Occupation and under the leadership of the Vichy Government. I can only imagine how painful but satisfying it must be to be able to reach back through time and learn more about your grandparents, the lives they led and how ultimately it led to you living the life you live today. It is said to be beautifully written and wonderfully researched. The book, pictured above was translated by Tina Kover.
The Corner Bookstore, Madison Avenue
The Corner Bookstore is a beautiful brownstone building on Madison Avenue that also boasts wonderful interiors. The ceiling, floor and cabinetry were inherited when the building was purchased in the 1970s, and date back all the way to the 1920s. We got here just a half an hour or so before closing time, but made our way through their thoughtful curation of fiction and nonfiction, determined to soak in as much a we could.
‘Open Throat’ by Henry Hove has a synopsis that I will not do justice when I summarise it here. Apart from the beautiful cover, it sounds like an intriguing and unique story that has a queer mountain lion as its protagonist and is set in Hollywood.
‘Palace Walk’ is the first book in the Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz. I am a sucker for historical fiction, and as I am on a mission to learn and consume histories that I have heard about but do not know too much of, this one fits the bill perfectly. It is set in British-occupied Egypt at the start of the 1900s. The trilogy allows us to follow three generations of a family through time in Cairo amidst the change and chaos that the city bears witness to from the early to mid 1900s.
‘Half-life of a Stolen Sister’ by Rachel Cantor was so striking because of its cover and then because of its subject matter. That three women from the same family would end up as world-renowned authors is incredible, especially women in the 1800s in England. We follow the sisters to understand how they became the prolific authors that they were.
‘When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion’ is about three women, Hortense Odlum, Dorothy Shaver and Geraldine Stutz who respectively became the heads of the famous department stores - Bonwit Teller, Lord & Taylor and Henri Bendel’s. All three of these department stores are now closed but these three woman ran them in their heyday and made them prized cultural institutions and tastemakers of the time.
Our lens of the ancient world has been largely shaped by male historians writing about men who created armies, waged wars, and conquered countries. There hasn’t been enough written about the women of the time who played pivotal roles in all frames of life - political, social, economic, domestic and many others. Daisy Dunn’s book ‘The Missing Thread: ‘A Women’s History of the Ancient World’ seeks to correct this by providing a lens on women from the past who history has overlooked, ignored and relegated to the side-lines.
To no one’s surprise, I found another book about bookstores. This one was about local bookstores in particular and as you can see has The Corner Bookstore on the cover. It has 68 oil paintings of storefronts of different local bookstores along with stories about the shops.
McNally Jackson, SoHo
I could spend days on end at McNally Jackson. The stacks of books and the bookshelves go on forever and are wonderfully organised.
I found more non-fiction to add to my list.
‘Caps Lock: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design and How to Escape from it’ by Ruben Pater was at the till and caught my eye immediately as I had never heard graphic design being discussed from this lens before. It talks about the importance of symbols, graphics and fonts in upholding capitalism, which is particularly interesting to me as someone who works in the marketing industry. As an aside, I thought the title was pretty genius too.
‘Notes on Complexity’ is a book by the scientist and philosopher Neil Theise and discusses complexity theory which is all about the interdependent, cohesive and expansive thing that is life and the universe.
I have read two books by Amitav Ghosh, one which I couldn’t stand and another which I loved in equal measure so I hope that ‘Gun Island’ will be a positive experience when I pick it up. I am hopeful, because it has many similarities to his book that I love called ‘A Hungry Tide’ in terms of its settings and themes. Amitav Ghosh’s writing often explores themes of environmental catastrophe and Gun Island is no different. In this book, we follow a rare book dealer named Dinanath (or ‘Deen’) who has to set out on a journey that takes him from India to America to Europe and leads him to reflect on and question what he knows about the world.
‘Lady Macbeth’ by Ava Read would be perfect to pick up this autumn or winter, for those who are seasonal readers. Ava Reid takes Lady Macbeth and reimagines Shakespeare’s story through her eyes, which sounds thrilling and mysterious.
‘Clandestine in Chile’ is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s is about the life and times of Miguel Littin, a Chilean film director, author and producer. He was forced to go into exile in 1973 after a U.S.-backed military coup led to the toppling of Salvador Allende’s government and the installation of the dictator, General Augusto Pinochet. Not to be thwarted, Miguel Littin returned to Chile in disguise and pretended to make a movie about tourism in Chile. However, what he was actually doing was filming an exposee. I have wanted to read books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez since I started learning Spanish so I was familiar with ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’, ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ and ‘No One Writes to the Colonel’, but it was thrilling to discover another one of his books and add it to my burgeoning list.
That is a total of 24 books that I refrained from buying, which I am very proud of. Of course, that’s not to say I won’t buy them at a later point, but my will power held at least a few times this year, which is something to celebrate.
In the hope that this post has given you something to add to your TBR!
Until next time,
Ishani
Loved visiting all these with you and rediscovering the joy of just breathing in the wonderful atmosphere you can only find in a bookshop