a city reader

My favorite bookstore window is this one at Three Lives in the West Village. They have other bigger windows with various titles sharply displayed, but in this window they always highlight just one book.

I feel lucky to go to this store. My middle daughter used to live near it and she’d go in there more than a few days a week. That’s how I got introduced to it.  

The small rural town I grew up in in western New York State didn’t have a bookstore. The bigger town down the hill did. There are parts of this city that don’t have a bookstore. You could put that fact on the blackboard the first day of class and discuss it all year long and you’d come to recognize the harsh imbalances in the city.