When I read Holocaust literature as a teenager, I was always the strong determined character who beat the odds and survived.  Tragedy provided a background for my heroic actions as Miep or Corrie Ten Boom.  Motherhood changed all that.  Now I’m the mother who can’t stop the Nazis from forcing her child to dig his own grave.  The mother who trods with so many others in peaceful lines to the gas chambers holding my child’s hand.  Or the very worst, I’m Sophie and I have to choose.  Claire won’t read Holocaust literature anymore, it’s too painful.  I completely support her choice.  If a book comes up that deals with the Holocaust, I quietly warn her to skip it.  But as painful as it is for me to read these stories, there is a part of me that believes if millions of people had to live and die this horror, then the least I can do is witness it in some small way.

My greatest honor as an attorney was the opportunity to work with Bet Tzedek to assist Holocaust survivors in obtaining the “Ghetto Pension” [an aside, if you know if a survivor who has not applied for the 2,000 euro Ghetto Pension/ZRBG pension, please contact Bet Tzedek to determine eligibility, today].  From my limited exposure, it appeared that the survivors who were alive today were swept into the Nazi system late in the war when they were teenagers.  Not too young or too old to fall victim to the selections, strong enough to survive until the war ended within the next 12 to 18 months.  And they barely survived.  My teenage visions of bravery were more illusory than I thought.  Elie Wiesel’s Night supports my very unscientific theory.

The Nazis arrived in Wiesel’s village in Transylvania when he was fifteen.  His experience paralleled so many of the stories I heard as an attorney.  First the community is forced into one or two designated areas, ghettos.  Then after a period of time the ghettos are cleared out and the inhabitants sent to concentration camps.  The Wiesel family is shipped via cattle car to Birkenau.  Immediately separated from his  mother and sisters, never to see his mother and youngest sister again, Wiesel took his father’s hand and entered hell.

Weisel was stripped of everything, his clothing, his hair, his dignity, all freedom of choice, his humanity, and most difficult for me to read, his faith.  In many ways his story is similar to many other Holocaust memoirs.  What sets Night apart, what actually glows amidst all of the terror, is Wiesel’s relationship with his father.  They live to keep the other alive.  Even after Wiesel loses all of his faith in God, on the verge of death himself, Wiesel prays that he will have the strength to be a good son.  Night is a Holocaust memoir, but it is also Weisel’s struggle with accepting how he acted as a son.  I read their story and wonder at what a blessing he was to his father, but it’s not my opinion or anyone else’s that Weisel needs to reconcile himself with, it is his own.

The Social Justice Challenge picked religious freedom as the topic to explore this month.  It motivated me to pick up Night which had been sitting on my bookshelf since my last visit to the Museum of Tolerance [another aside, here's my adventure taking teenagers to visit the Museum of Tolerance for Kids Off the Couch] .  What is most impressive about this Challenge is that participants agree to actually do something related to the monthly topic at least three times a year.  My activity for this topic was a lecture I gave at my daughter’s middle school Global Studies class about applying for Holocaust reparations and working with Holocaust survivors.  The students were reading the Maus books in English and had just learned about German war reparations after WWI.  I talked to them about the various Holocaust reparation programs and what the survivors I worked with had to prove to obtain the Ghetto Pension.  When I asked for questions at the end, there was just silence, which made me wonder if I bored them.  Then came an onslaught, all quizzical, not quite understanding one point or another, trying to make sense of a system that is inexplicable.  I answered their questions, and left knowing they, like the rest of us, will have to grapple with a horror  for which there isn’t any justification, no excuse, no sense  and no ability to make whole.

Kim gets news before I do.  So she shot me an email a few minutes ago, to tell me that JD Salinger had just died.  I’ve said to her in the past that his Nine Stories is probably my favorite book in the whole world, so she asked me if I wanted to write something about him, and maybe include my reasons for loving that book so much, since she didn’t have the same passion for it.  Salinger isn’t about Catcher in the Rye for me, I should be clear on that.  I read it once, didn’t like it, haven’t reread it.  But Nine Stories . . .

Best. Book. Ever.

How do you tell someone why a book gets to you on some deep emotional level?  It’s something both Kim and I have struggled with, I think, as we’ve written this blog and also tried to persuade each other to read certain books.  She loves Atonement; I couldn’t finish it (not because I didn’t like it, but because it was clearly going to be about someone making a false accusation and ruining someone’s life and I can’t bear that kind of a story.  The writing was beautiful).  Anyway, she tried to convince me to finish that and I never did.  So how can I convey to her how Nine Stories is more than just a collection of words to me?

It’s one of the books that made me want to be a writer, I know that much.  And I know that every time I write a patch of dialogue that feels real to me (not as often as I’d like), I think about JD Salinger and how no one has ever written more realistic dialogue, dialogue which sounds like what people might actually say–but resonates in ways that stay with you for a long time.

And then there’s the Glass family.  Or should I say, first and foremost, there’s the Glass family, who are more real to me than most of the people I know.  Seymour and Buddy and the twins and Franny and Zooey and Boo Boo.  Did I leave anyone out?  Probably.  They weave in and out of Nine Stories, sometimes front and center (“A Perfect Day for Bananafish”) sometimes off to the side but still influential (“Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut”).

Oh, god.   “Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut.”  What woman can read that story and not weep for what she thought her life was going to be as opposed to what it is?  In that story, Eloise remember being in love with Walt Glass (who died during the war) and then looks at her life now, married to a guy who’s nowhere near as sensitive or smart as Walt was.  Miserable, drunk, disgusted with what she’s become, she is suddenly, savagely cruel to her own daughter.  And then she says to her friend, desperately, tragically, “I was a nice girl . . .  wasn’t I?”

Well, now I’m crying.  Salinger has that affect on me.  Seven words, that’s all it took.  Seven words–something someone might actually say–and an entire tragic life is summed up, right there.

Then there’s “For Esme–with Love and Squalor.”  All the horrors of war and how it can destroy a man’s soul–and the redemption a small, intelligent, and loving little girl can offer.  There isn’t a drop of sentimentality in this story.  Just the sense that there’s still something decent in the world, despite all evidence at times to the contrary.  We’re never told who the soldier in the story is.  I suspect it’s Walt Glass.  If anyone knows otherwise, let me know.  I haven’t studied Salinger in school ever, just read him on my own and I’m doing this mostly from memory, so I may have some “facts” wrong.

Not all the nine stories are about the Glass family but (in my opinion) the best ones are.  Why do I love the Glass family so much?  They’re brilliant.  They’re half-Jewish, half-Irish.  They’re a big, loving family and they all talk too much.  They look out for each other, the older ones advising and hectoring the younger ones, but they’re also desperately alone at times.

When I was in high school, my best friend compared my family to the Glass family.  We’re not really like them–they’re twice as large and brilliant.   But I think I did relate to the Glasses on some personal level because I came from a big noisy moderately intellectual family. And when I read Franny and Zooey, the way the big brother abuses, insults, and nurtures his little sister felt so right to me–so much the way my own big brother treated me (and my son now treats his little sister)–that I compulsively read and reread the second half of that book for years.

This passage from “Franny and Zooey” gets to me like nothing else: the little sister has been “playing Camille” as her brother puts it, not eating and compulsively reciting prayers in some sort of twenty-year-old’s search for spirituality.  Their mother (Bessie) is worried about her and has been trying to take care of her.  And her brother makes this speech:

“You don’t even have sense enough to drink when somebody brings you a cup of consecrated chicken soup–which is the only kind of chicken soup Bessie ever brings to anybody around this madhouse.  So just tell me, just tell me, buddy.  Even if you went out and searched the whole world for a master–some guru, some holy man, to tell you how to say your Jesus prayer properly, what good would it do you?  How in hell are you going to recognize a legitimate holy man when you see one if you don’t even know a cup of consecrated chicken soup when it’s right in front of your nose?”

And that’s why I love JD Salinger.

To whitewash is to erase; to erase a whole community of people who look a certain way. Whether unintentional or not, it’s cruel. When you say that boycotting is not the answer because it hurts the author and that instead I should buy the book, you are telling me that money is more important than integrity. You may not know that’s what you’re saying, but that’s what I hear. By boycotting, I’m taking my power as a consumer and giving my money to another publisher.

Vassilly’s post includes links to several others concerning this issue.  Amy  at My Friend Amy talked at length about growing increasingly aware of racism.  Personally, I regret the hurt feelings caused by Bloomsbury’s actions and some the discussions, but I firmly believe that racism prevails in silence.  Discussions such as the ongoing ones over the last 10 days are important to spotlight and prevent insidious forms of prejudice.

Late last week, Bloomsbury issued the following statement:  ”Bloomsbury is ceasing to supply copies of the US edition of Magic Under Glass. The jacket design has caused offense and we apologize for our mistake. Copies of the book with a new jacket design will be available shortly.”

Want to stay current on the issue of whitewashing?  Consider joining the group Readers Against White Washing on Facebook.  They are “committed to public criticism of publishers who misrepresent characters.”  Publishers and readers will be more aware the this issue if people join together to advocate an end to whitewashing.

Things weren’t going so badly.  My extended family had decided to have a reunion over the holidays and the east coasters readily agreed to come west for the sunny weather.  (Remember sunny weather?  As I write this, it’s been raining nonstop for the last five days.  But normally we DO have sun here in L.A.)  My sister, the master negotiater, had managed to get us a group rate discount on club floor rooms at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel in Dana Point, and we were, as the saying goes, sitting pretty: the Club Room offered us five food “presentations” a day–not meals, presentations–although they hadn’t realized who they were dealing with and we certainly showed THEM, managing to make three to four full meals a day out of itsy-bitsy sandwiches and teeny-weeny canapes.

After a few days of sitting and eating our way through the morning, afternoon and evening, we needed a break.  It was time to leave the hotel and tear ourselves away from the chairs in the Club Room which were beginning to take on the curves of our butts.  Someone in our group suggested we walk to town, do a little shopping, work off a little of breakfast (Food Presentation #1) before we committed ourselves to moving on to lunch (Food Presentation #2 although it did occasionally bleed into Food Presentation #3.).  So off we set to go to “town”, like the intrepid explorers we were.

Only problem was: we had no idea where town was or how far.   Or even what it was called: were we going to Laguna Niguel, Laguna Beach, or Dana Point?  Were they all towns?  And which direction were we supposed to go, anyway?  After wandering around aimlessly for a few minutes, we spotted a local library branch and I said, “Oh, I wanted to see if I could check out some books for a day or two.”  So we crossed the street and as we neared the library we saw a sign that said “Book Sale.”

Now, I love library book sales.  Our local Palisades branch does one every couple of months or so and I’ve both donated to it and bought from it (which illustrates the property of either equilibrium or status quo, I’m not sure which).  So my pace quickened with the thrill of the hunt.

As we came toward the entrance of the library, I faltered, a little disappointed: there seemed to be nothing special about this book sale: a few shelving units spread near the entrance of the library with the usual assortment of junky vacation novels for 25 cents a pop, all turning a faded color from being out in the sun.

And then my sister said, “Hey, look.  There’s a real bookstore here.”

And sure enough, there was.  It even had its own entrance, off to the left.  I’d almost missed it.  We went inside and there we found a really really good used bookstore, well stocked and well-priced, run by the Friends of the Dana Point Library, with the proceeds going to the library.

There’s nothing I like better than a sound moral excuse to buy books.  Our library system can always use some extra funding, right?  (Actually, it’s not technically OUR library system, since we were in Orange County, but close enough.)  So I scoured the aisles, ready to buy.  I had just finished Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize winning Olive Kitteridge (show of hands here: anyone other reader worried that that book hit a little too close to home as we head into our middle years?) and someone had recommended another book of hers to me, Amy and Isabelle, and within minutes I had found a copy right there, on the shelves of this very small bookstore.  I hadn’t even been looking for it.  I just stumbled across it.  Talk about being in the right place at the right time.  My sister was jealous.  I offered to let her get it, but she felt strongly that “she who spots it gets to take it home.”

It’s not a surprise that I found exactly the book I wanted: the bookstore was surprisingly up to date and well stocked for one small room, roughly the size of a child’s bedroom.

The volunteer there pointed me toward the Young Adult section when I asked: it wasn’t large, but it had an interesting selection of books from the very recent to the very old, and I found about four new books to bring back to the hotel for my daughter who had been complaining that she had finished the books she had brought with her and had nothing else to read.  (She wasn’t with me that day but, true to form, once she saw the goodies I had scored, insisted on being brought back there the next day and picked out a bunch more books for herself.)

While I slowly moved along the aisles, from cookbooks to fiction to YA novels to science, my son busily sorted through stacks of used National Geographic magazines, picking out ones he thought his little brother would like.  At something like 10 cents a copy, there was no reason NOT to get him a bunch.

Meanwhile, my sister asked the woman at the front desk (a volunteer, as we discovered) which way we should go for our “walk into town.”  The woman informed her that the nearest town was miles away  and it would take us over an hour to walk there.  There was a shopping center not too far off if we wanted to go there, though.  I asked if I could leave my books while we walked, but the volunteer said it was too risky because everyone who worked there had a tendency to reshelves any books left lying around, so my son took one heavy bag and I took the other and we all headed toward the shopping center, only to realize that a) it was farther than we wanted to go; b) we had just inadvertently circled back to another part of the sprawling hotel and c) we had wasted enough time at the bookstore that we could now justify going back to the Club Room and eating another meal, which was really the point of the whole excursion anyway.

So we went back to the hotel, ate our way to immobility, distributed the books to our families, and, as I mentioned, made a second trip to the library bookstore the next day when my daughter bought a bunch more books.  So now instead of just sitting around the Club Room, talking and eating most of the day, we had a new activity: reading in the Club Room while eating most of the day.

All in all, a very satisfying vacation, if you ignore the five pounds I gained from the Five Daily Food Presentations . . .

The English governess occupied a unique and lonely role in society.  She must be educated enough to teach others, but poor  enough to needed a job.  She wasn’t in the same social class, but she ate at with the family.  She was present, but could be treated with disdain.  She wasn’t a servant, but she wasn’t a friend.  Agnes’ experience walking home from church exemplifies this quandary:

But when I did walk, this first half of the journey was generally a great nuisance to me.  As none of the before-mentioned ladies and gentlemen ever noticed me, it was disagreeable to walk beside them, as if listening to what they said, or wishing to be thought one of them, while they talked over me or across, and if their eyes, in speaking, chanced to fall on me, it seemed as if they looked on vacancy – as if they either did not see me, or were very desirous to make it appear so.

It was disagreeable, too, to walk behind, and thus appear to acknowledge my own inferiority; for, in truth, I considered myself pretty nearly as good as the best of them, and wished them to know that I did so, and not to imagine that I looked upon myself a a mere domestic, who knew her own place too well to walk beside such fine ladies and gentlemen as they were . . . though her young ladies might choose to have her with them, and even condescend to converse with her, when no better company were at hand.

It was an isolated life, not part of the community of servants downstairs and excluded from the family life upstairs.  Agnes goes weeks without having a conversation outside her role a governess.

The governess’ presence at the dinner table served as an uncomfortable warning and threat.  The governess was a constant reminder that if a daughter didn’t marry, she would have to earn a living and her primary option was to be a governess herself.  On the other hand, an attractive, charming and single woman constantly present in the house could provide competition for the daughters in the household.  It wasn’t unheard of for a governess to marry, as Miss Taylor became Mrs. Weston in Austen’s Emma.

This in between state exists today in American society, what is the role of the full time and/or live-in nanny?  How much is she family and how much is she an employee?  What authority does she have over the children?  How much responsibility for their upbringing?  I’ve never read The Nanny Diaries, but I may pick it up to compare the viewpoints from childcare professionals across the centuries.

This is my first book for the All About Bronte Challenge.  If Anne’s sisters live up to Anne, I’m going to enjoy reading each of their books.

When You Reach Me caused quite a stir last year among kids and adults for its clever writing and plot.  What I’ve found interesting, and it’s ironic I’m writing about this on Martin Luther King Day, is the discussion about race in When  You Reach Me. Julia, a character in When You Reach Me is described as having non-white skin (“cafe au lait”) without any discussion of her racial background or any racial epiphany in the book.  The book isn’t about race and doesn’t purport to be about race.  Is that a flaw?  Colleen Mondor wrote about this on her blog Chasing Ray and she links to other discussion posts.  My personal opinion is that non-white people and characters have no obligation to represent their race.  There are times to discuss race issues and those discussions are enriched by participants (real or fictional) from various racial backgrounds.  But literary life is fantasy and romance and history and science fiction, you name it, and a plot doesn’t have to stop or even artfully include a race moment because of the presence of a non-white character.

It may be that the discussion is prompted by putting When You Reach Me under the Newbery microscope, but it caused me to think about my own friendships. How much in our everyday lives do I talk about race with my Asian, Latino and black friends?  Not that much.  We’ve had the big discussions at times, and will again, and there are gentle jokes thrown back and forth (I can’t count how many times my husband has heard “you are such a white boy”), but we’re are all struggling with similar issues: the economy, our kids starting to drive, and the fact our memory seems to be on permanent vacation.  If we’re talking about Koreans or living some place where you are the only person of your race (growing up Korean in Alabama a few decades ago was an experience), I will probably mention my friend Jackie.  But if we’re talking about Jackie, I’ll tell you about her incredible energy and her ability to laugh at herself, and maybe somewhere in the conversation, I might mention that she is Korean.  And that is what Dr. King talked about when he had a dream, that we judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

I want to read books about racial issues, both fiction and non-fiction.  Many aspects of our lives contain a racial element that can be a part of a discussion or plot in a book, small or large.  But, I also think that racial characters should be in books and absolutely  nothing done with the fact of their race because it is irrelevant to the plot.  The distinguished contribution that Rebecca Stead made to American literature wasn’t intended to be about race relations, so she shouldn’t be knocked for not expanding on it in her book.

Last year I joined four reading challenges:  the Essay Reading Challenge, the Art History Reading Challenge, the World Citizen Challenge and 100 Shots of Short (a short story challenge).  All taught me a bit about my reading and the subject I explored.  Well, almost all, I never read a single book for the World Citizen Challenge, but I did read the New York Times all year, which should compensate a little bit.  Here are my plans for this year:

• My favorite challenge was the Essay Reading Challenge, so I’ve joined it again.  Because I don’t write reviews of each of the essays, there is a page dedicated to this challenge and I’ll write a wrap up post when I’m done.
• 100 Shots of Short is a perpetual challenge and I’m just over halfway done.  Again, because I don’t review every short story, I have a separate page for 100 Shots of Shorts.
• I love the Art History Reading Challenge and am looking forward to another year of reading about and viewing art.  Last year I committed to the six book level, this year I’m going to strive for nine books.  I’m hoping to combine what I’m reading with what I’m seeing to enrich both.  I will write separate posts about the books I read.
• I signed up for Literary Affair’s Bronte Literary Luncheon series and was excited to see the All About Bronte Challenge.  I was going to read the books anyway, so it feels like a “gimmie” but why pass up a list crossing off opportunity?  This challenge includes books by and about the Brontes plus spin offs from the novels, and the Bronte movies.  I’ll commit to reading three Bronte books, one from each sister, but am hoping to do more.  I’ll write separate posts for my book reviews.
• Even though I utterly failed at the World Citizen Challenge, I’ve decided to join the Social Justice Challenge.  For me, a book can be good on it’s own, but what makes it rise to the pantheon of great in my life is if it contributes to my non-reading life.  That could mean that it is the spring board for a great conversation, or it causes me to see a different viewpoint, or it enriches an experience related to the book.  What attracts me to the Social Justice Challenge is that for at least three months during 2010 the participants commit to doing something.  Each month of the challenge concentrates on a different issue.  This month is religious freedom and next month’s topic is water.  Each month the participants commit to a certain level of activity related to the issue, some months just reading a book, other months reading and doing an activity ,and if needed, a few months can be spent just observing what others are doing.  I’m looking forward to exploring important topics a little bit deeper.  During the months that I’m reading a book, I’ll post about it.

Those are my hopes for 2010, in addition to reading books for book groups, literary events, vacation, spiritual direction, translated books and just because it looks interesting.  Let us know of any interesting challenges you’ve found (even if you didn’t join).

You already know that Kim and I like to read.  We also like to eat.  So it stands to reason that we like to read about food.  When I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago that described my new year’s resolution to become a vegetarian–a resolution inspired by two books about cooking and food–faithful reader and occasional contributor Meagan suggested we make food writing a regular part of the blog.  We love that idea.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that books about food can be broken down into four categories: 1. Cookbooks, 2. Essays about food and meals, 3. Anecdotes and memoirs about life in the food industry, and 4. Diet or prescriptive books about food (i.e. books about what we should or shouldn’t eat).

I’m sure I’ve left something out, but let’s just say for now that most books about food fit into at least one of these categories.

Oh, wait–thought of one more.  5. Fiction that includes recipes, like Nora Ephron’s Heartburn.

I think I’ve mentioned before on this blog that cookbooks are like pornography to me: I love to acquire them and leaf through their pages, giving free rein to my imagination as I gaze at photos and pretend that I could do such things, knowing full well I’ll probably never have the energy.  The truth is that most of the recipes I cook from are either old and scrawled on index cards or culled that day from the internet–it’s a lot faster to search for “miso salmon recipe” than it is to scan index after index of the cookbooks on my shelf.  But I still find myself drifting over to the cookbook shelves in bookstores and I still want to take home the most appealing ones I find. Like I said: it’s about dreaming, not necessarily doing.  

Diet books (and by that I mean any book that talks about food choices, so that would include things like Fast Food Nation or Food Matters) are inherently less interesting to me.  Ever since hearing Michael Pollan’s famous advice (“Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly vegetables.”), I’ve felt like any other advice is overkill.  What more do we need to know than that?   But I’ve bought my share of books about managing Celiac Disease and I’m grateful for the writers who keep reminding us that our health and the earth’s future is in our control and we should be mindful of both.

I may be a little sluggish when it comes to reading something that, like your vegetables, is more good for you than enjoyable, but I’ll read anything about working in a restaurant (does that make it metaphorical junk food?).  Nothing makes you appreciate how (relatively) easy your own life is more than reading about an amateur trying to survive in a real restaurant kitchen.  It’s truly dangerous, what with the burns and the tempers and the sharp knives, and the pressure of keeping up is unbelievable.   Bill Buford’s Heat is a fun read, and Anthony Bourdain’s books make you realize that even for a successful professional, the pitfalls of opening and running a restaurant are innumerable.  You’ll never go out to eat again without wondering what’s going on in the kitchen.

Fiction is as fiction does, which means a good novel will work with or without recipes, so I don’t have a lot to say about that trend (which seems to come and go) except that the story better be good and the recipes better be tested or I’ll end up annoyed.

I’ve left my favorite kind of food writing for last: essays about food and life.  The greatest food writer ever (as far as I’m concerned) is MFK Fisher who seamlessly and apparently effortlessly captures the role that food plays in memory, love, and our lives in all of her essay collections.  I read every book of hers I could get my hands on many years ago because–more than any other writer–she made me taste the food she wrote about.  Her recipes are practical and doable, but the charm of her essays is in the way she captures the role of food in her emotional life.  I frequently think about one essay of hers, when the man she’s seeing tastes the very subtle curry she’s been working on for hours and tells her it’s not seasoned enough and starts dumping in some heavy spices.  She watches him, not interfering, just aware that his inability to appreciate the subtlety of her cooking means he’ll never understand her and that their relationship is doomed.  Any fiction writer could learn from her. Amazing writer.  Amazing woman.

This is all just an overview, mind you–an introduction to a new regular feature on bookstorepeople.  Our goal is to showcase regularly books about eating and cooking that we’ve found particularly delightful or meaningful.  If you have any favorite food authors or books you’d like to share, let us know.   Meanwhile, as our friend Julia Child would have said, “Bon appetit.”  I’ll see you in the cookbook section . . .

Strolling through Greenwich Village, this inconspicuous little Mystery Bookstore snuck up on us as quickly and quietly as the protagonists it has dedicated itself to.  At first glance, Partners & Crime looks just like another one of the Mom & Pop shops that lined Greenwich drive, albeit with a catchy name.  Figuring I could always use a good mystery novel, I decided to head inside.  If nothing else, it would not take very long, as the store was also no bigger than the neighboring locally-owned shops it resembled.

Walking into the store felt much like walking into a library.  It was deafeningly quiet, with a small reading room in the back.  Never to be mistaken for a place to study, the store owner is quick to remind you — should you forget as I did — that “you don’t have to whisper, it’s not a library.”  The shelves were not remarkably expansive, but made up for it in its specialty categories, which included tough guys, historical, espionage, and exotic locale.  Perhaps the most endearing and impressive aspect of Partners & Crime is that their employees appeared to have read every single book in the store.  One worker was able to provide thorough insight into every book a patron questioned him about.  After three or four visitors, I had to resist the urge to test him by grabbing books at random and asking “what about this one? and this one?”  There is a passion for their books that is reflected in their everything from their expansive categorization, to their schedule of authors slated to visit the store, to their prominently displayed signed first editions and British Imports.

I stumbled on their collection of Michael Connelly books and recalled a friend raving about Connelly’s Harry Bosch novels.  Before I could even finish my seemingly elementary questions, the store’s worker responded that “Black Echo” is the first of the Bosch novels, and yes, they are as good as everybody says.  I strolled over to the $1 used book table towards the front of the store, and found a tattered copy of Black Echo, which I promptly purchased.  Before leaving I glanced through their shelves dedicated to Sherlock Holmes (my personal favorite), filled with collector’s editions and “new novels” covered by authors such as Michael Chabon and Laurie King.  ”I haven’t read Chabon’s Final Solution yet but it is supposed to be an excellent short story if you like Sherlock Holmes.”  OK so maybe they have not read every book in the store, but it is a safe bet that not too many conversations there start with “I haven’t read…”

Partners & Crime

44 Greenwich Ave

New York, NY

T:  212.243.0440