It's a courageous move, especially when the future of books is so precarious, thanks to E-Readers and the like. You know, all those glowing rectangles we spend 90% of our waking hours staring at.
The bookshop already has a steady crowd, and the selection is good. Alphabetically, in the Fiction section, you'll find bunches of Auster, Bellow, Bukowski, Carver, DeLillo, Hemingway, Murakami, Pynchon, Roth, Woolf, Yates. (Some of my favorites there.)
Prices are decent--comparable to, if not slightly less than, the prices at old standby East Village Books, the last (until now) used bookshop in the neighborhood.
There are no business cards yet, no bookmarks, and no sign out front. But the owner says they're coming, along with a curated selection of new books. In a city and a neighborhood that has been running its indie bookstores out of business, let's help keep this newcomer going.
More Bookstores:
Left Bank
Westsider
Bookbook
Mercer Street
Spoonbill & Sugartown
Atlantic
Vanished Bookstores:
12th Street Books
7th Avenue Books
Skyline
Biography
spring street books!
ReplyDeleteI keep waiting for them to unveil the bar and menu of specialty cocktails starting at $18!
ReplyDeleteHa! No, this is all really good....
I'm eating my curated breakfast alongside my curated Cafe Bustelo. Please, Jere, don't help promote this annoying new usuage.
ReplyDeletesorry, baha, i should put it in quotes.
ReplyDeleteI went in on Sunday and can't tell you how many times I heard someone exclaim, "Cool!" as they walked by. A good sign...
ReplyDeletebring back Etherea!
ReplyDeleteI cringe at the abuse of the word curated too, but I stopped in here this weekend and it's a rare case where I actually understand why they're using it.
ReplyDeleteThey have a great selection of fiction, going well beyond the usual suspects (Auster, Roth, Murakami, etc). I found 2 books by Harry Mathews and a few by Jane Bowles, not the most obscure writers, but missing from many shelves in NYC. Also, when it came to the classics, they seemed to take care with which editions they stocked. Every used book store has a copy or 2 or What Maisie Knew, but Mast had a used copy with the Edward Gorey illustration as its cover. The art and film section were also really top-notch.
None of this seemed to drive up the prices, which were very reasonable.