Welcome to Litsy!

so so so true…love getting books & bookish gifts as presents and this year i got a kindle case and the kindle remote page turner so my arms stay inside the blanket when reading…it was my favorite gift this xmas… #readinglife #readinggoal #iwasonthenicelist

Not a lucky pick for #foodandlit
What a drag...nothing happens, there is no coherent story or theme, the number of names and characters is completely insane and all of this is normal for someone's diary, but why would anyone publish this and expect anyone else to be able to follow.
Not everything a poet writes is poetry. It really feels like a grab for money and saving on editing if any was done at all.
@Catsandbooks @Texreader

Mr. Friss has written a love story to the radical and revolutionary ties bookshops have to the communities which host them. He imparts American history as much as he details the trajectory of bookselling. This is a definite recommendation.

I love books about books - this is a fascinating, anecdotal wander through histories of collectors, libraries and ideas.

As early as 1806 the traveller John Lambert noticed... [NYC] bookshops were 'numerous' and that a lot of people seemed to be reading in coffee shops. Two early characters were Emanuel Conegliano, one of Mozart's librettists, who ran a specialist Italian bookstore so compendious that Columbia University bought [it and] ...William Gowans, parts of whose shop, with its piles of books up to ten feet high, had to be navigated with sperm-oil lamps.

Martha Nussbaum argued... Western concern with cleanliness is ' a refusal to... be contaminated by a potent reminder of one's own mortality and animality'.

.....The Finnish philosopher Olli Lagerspetz takes comfort from the idea that hygiene can be suspect:

As a sometimes negligent householder... I am naturally soothed by the idea that exaggerated cleanliness is not next to godliness but to fascism and xenophobia.

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.

Great 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...