A Short Visit to Three Lives in Greenwich Village

I didn't get much time to browse bookstores on my recent visit to New York. That said, I was able to stop at the bookseller open house and say hi to Toby and Company at Three Lives.

We traded our favorite reads. I suggested they carry The Tortoise and the Hare and take another look at Day for Night. They told me that folks are not normally let into the store if they haven't read all of Joan Silber's books. I told them I had read Ideas of Heaven, but it was not good enough. The a customer interrupted to say that, really, I should read The Size of the World right now.

Looking for something to buy, I picked up several recent literary highlights, which will go unnamed, because I don't want anyone to think that Toby talked me out of their book. "Oh you can get said unnamed book anywhere. I have a signed copies of Just Kids." And he was right, it's yet another book where shame courses through me because I haven't read Patti Smith's memoir. And a signed copy? I bought it.

What was selling? Edmund White's City Boy continues to sell very well there. At one point, they took down the poster in the window, but when there was some space, they put it up again, and sales instantly picked up to double digits per week. Mr. White should go thank them!

I took lots more notes, and then promptly lost them.

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