Books at 12th and Broadway

One stop on my NYC trip was Strand Bookstore. Judging from Strand, books are not dead. It boasts 18 miles of books, and people lined nearly every one of those miles. Last year for Christmas, my son gave me a Strand gift card, urging me not to use it online but to hold it for a future trip to the brick-and-mortar store at 12th and Broadway. I took his advice and held on to the card, always eager for a bookstore tourism opportunity.

Books at 12th and Broadway.jpg

Oh happy day! Books to buy without a dollar spent. I chose three books: one that I specifically looked for (The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka by Ernst Pawel), one from my long to-read list, which I saw lying on a table, begging for purchase (Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose), and one, a title previously unknown to me, that just popped off the shelf (Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life by Julia Briggs).