Mark O'Connell of the New Yorker likes the idea that 'a nicely sharpened HB' can be so powerful, and is funny about it:
"I tend to slot mine behind my right ear, carpenter style; I like to think this lends a somewhat rough-and-ready aspect to my appearance as I sit reading Middlemarch on the bus home.
pickGreat read, especially timely. Jam packed with information about Amazon, their practices, and the global, far reaching implications. Borrrowed from my library, this was written by a indie bookstore owner who has a clear perspective and strong opinions about the best way to fight back against the shady dealings and secretive data mining they Amazon has perfected. Also, going to exclusively track my books in storygraph next yr, no more goodreads.
Traveling for the holidays? Check out our Litsy Favorite Bookstore list for something in the area to explore! And if you haven‘t added YOUR most beloved bookstore yet, please do! We currently have gems from the US, Canada, Ireland, and the UK, but you‘re welcome to add bookstores from anywhere around the world, too!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bhrLSxrlmKcF3aIUlraHGNQ5XedXvextPbfd3RYeQgw/...
Photo: Albertine, French bookstore in NYC!
This way of collecting books for their look, rather than content, is a perennial cul-de-sac of collecting, observed by Seneca of scroll collectors in Roman times: 'Many use books not as tools for study but as decorations for the dining room! [Some] get their pleasure merely from bindings and labels.'
Image Abbey Library of St. Gallen via https://www.1000libraries.com/post/2025-top-10-most-beautiful-libraries-in-the-w...
& no Paris trip is complete without a visit to Shakespeare and Company
These are the books I came out with:
- Sally on the Rocks reminded my of a Barbara Pym novel
- The Paris Trilogy was recommended to any lover of Annie Ernaux
- Virgina Wolf had prepared The Life of Violet for publication, so then I want to read this early work
- Paris in Winter is the #SundayBuddyRead for December next year
- & Braithwaite‘s highly anticipated 2nd novel
pickThis is a light pick for me. I enjoyed it but didn‘t love it. I appreciated the early history of how bookstores developed in the U.S. and found the stories of well-known independent bookstores interesting. However, this is an incredibly broad topic, and hearing about a few specific bookstores I know or have visited just made me want to learn of more variety for my list.
#audiobook #Nonfiction #NonfictionNovember #NFNovember #LitsyBookClub
pickI listened to the audiobook, and I loved it. I love the character and quirk he brings to antiquarian book selling. Like the categories of customers—Smaug, Vampire, Book Runner, Cryptid, Spindleman, Ancient, and Suited Gentlemen. Very funny and lively take on it.
[Robert, Count de Montesquiou] realized that German idea of making your life a work of art: a gesamtkunstwerk.
...he made his upstairs flat over-looking the Seine into 'the mirror of my soul', exotically furnished with japonisme and books. Many of us look around our dwelling and see...a series of shabby compromises, half-loved inherited junk, broken things, lingering IKEA tat ...and does anyone, hand-on-heart, have the curtains they really want?
...a Mexican, Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-95).... Her grandfather loved books, and in his house she taught herself to read and write Latin before she was five. Greek followed soon afterwards and as an adolescent she learned Aztec... she collected books and continued to educate herself....
Reading, she argued, should be a habit shared among women... 'we can perfectly well philosophize whilst cooking dinner'.
... the great Persian scholar al-Sahib ibn Abbad (d. 995). The Emir of Persia offered him the plum job of running the empire's most important province, Khorasan, but he declined on the grounds that it would take 400 camels to move his personal library.
...he encouraged the establishment of state libraries in Qom, Isfahan and Tehran, the latter containing 200,000 books.
