Books are things that I’ve always given and shared with the people I’m close to and care about, they’re a way for me to give them something of myself that I don’t have the means or capacity to otherwise express.
New York is a great reader’s city. I’m not going to quote statistics, because every survey I’ve looked at is unscientific and based around characteristics like number of libraries and bookstores, presence of liberal arts colleges, etc—in other words, nothing but vibes. The vibes are strong here: there is an extensive library system, plenty of bookstores (some of the great ones like the Strand and the Mysterious Bookshop), lots of students, and people reading everywhere: in cafes, on the subway (this used to be chronicled by the now-dormant CoverSpy), even walking down the street.
The vibes tell me that Brooklyn is the best place for readers in NYC, and my own extended neighborhood seems the best of the best. I’m not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that when I feel like taking a look at a book that’s new to me, the first thing I do is go outside and walk around my neighborhood. And I don’t even mean heading to a bookstore, though Books Are Magic and the new Liz’s Book Bar are close, and it’s just a moderate stroll to Freebird Books, Unnameable Books, and Troubled Sleep Books. I mean I pick up books people are giving away.
Book Hunting
There are five Little Libraries within easy walking distance of where I live (which is at the nexus of Gowanus, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, and Carroll Gardens), and there’s a sixth if I decide to head over to my previous neighborhood of Red Hook. There’s also informal book drop locations at bodegas and certain homes where people often leave books out on the stoops.
For a reader, it’s quite a bounty. It’s easy to find interesting books to read, like Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys and a preview copy of Neal Stephenson’s Polostan which doesn’t come out until October 15 (I read everything from him). I’ve picked up David Foster Wallace essay collections, Lydia Davis’ stories, Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great Cities, Dana Stevens’ bio of Buster Keaton, Camera Man. I wonder about the explanation for why I see so many copies of Catch-22, Invisible Man, and The Rum Diaries given away. I’ve found some real surprises too, like a copy of Charles Bukowski’s Hot Water Music—I’m a Buke fan and have all his published writing, but no one ever, ever discards his books, it just doesn’t happen! It’s such an oddity to me that I’ve hung on to this extra copy, it must mean something.
There’s often the collector’s thrill of finding something unusual, niche, even valuable in a way. In Red Hook, that was a copy of the TV series tie-in mass market paperback of Studs Lonigan which I don’t see listed at any used book site (mass market is my favorite format so it’s extra nice to find that size, especially amid the general decline in their production). I now also have a paperback edition of Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing In America/Pill Vs Springhill Mine Disaster/In Watermelon Sugar, and—and this still amazes me—I’ve had Greg Tate’s Flyboy in the Buttermilk on my want list for a long time but the price hovers around $130. Well, a few weeks ago I peeked into the Little Library of the top photo and there was a near-pristine paperback copy, not new but seemingly never opened. Oh man.
Finding books has been a delightful experience in so many ways: there’s been serendipitous coincidences, finding copies I’ve been thinking about and eyeing on the used book market, like The Power Broker and a faux-vintage Penguin reissue of Nick Cave’s And the Ass Saw the Angel. Camus and Pierre Tellhard de Chardin were on my mind and then I came across Lyrical and Critical Essays and Christianity and Evolution. There’s finding things I didn’t know existed, like a novelization of Paul Schrader’s movie Hardcore, Barry Gifford’s Sailor & Luna: The Complete Novels collected in one volume. I’ve had to leave books behind (or lost) in my various moves that I’ve now found and am glad to have to reread, like The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach and the collection of Beckett’s Malloy/Malone Dies/The Unnamable, Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, and Flann O’Brien’s incredible At Swim-to-Birds. What has to be the most unusual and unexpected is finding Carlo Levi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli, and then a couple weeks later at a different location, the original Cristo si è fermato a Eboli—this was the first novel I read in Italian.
This is all more than a little addicting. If I have a run of good finds over a week or so, I start going out on the prowl, to see if I can get that “a ha!” feeling again. I definitely go out for walks thinking, “what can I find today?”, and I’ve set myself the goal of eventually collecting the entire Penguin paperback edition of Dickens, all in Little Libraries.
Closing the Circle
There is also, to me, a deeper personal connection. Books are things that I’ve always given and shared with the people I’m close to and care about, they’re a way for me to give them something of myself that I don’t have the means or capacity to otherwise express. Finding a book that matters to me means that there’s someone out there, a stranger, that I now have an uncanny intimacy with. I also recirculate books through different Little Libraries than where I found them, and many of the music books I review go into them, and it’s nice to pass by these locations and see my own discards gone, it feels like I’m contributing to the world of readers.
There have also been books on the street that bring certain parts of my history into full circle. One of my favorite books of all time is Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris. One of my sisters gave this to me years ago and I’ve held on to it since and reread it. When my marriage ended, I left all my books at my ex-wife’s place—many are still there, including that one. Earlier this year, I gave it to my daughter because she’s passionate about science. Then a couple months later, I was walking down the street and spotted a bag with books outside a brownstone, and looking inside was another copy of the same edition.
Another one of my personal essential books is Geoffrey O’Brien’s The Phantom Empire. The original hardcover is at my ex’s, and through the years I have bought copies for important friends, to deepen that intimacy. Most recently, I gave it as a Christmas gift in 2018 to someone I had a relationship with. That later fell apart, badly in the end, and so I moved out of yet another home.
Sometime in the summer of 2022, I was walking back through that old neighborhood, and noticed that the apartment house where I had lived was being renovated and my old place was empty. I went around the corner to check in on that Red Hook Little Library, and there was that exact copy of The Phantom Empire, untouched and now happily back in my possession. An empty space was now filled.
For those readers in the vicinity, the Brooklyn Book Festival opens September 22 and runs through the end of the month.
It's about time someone wrote an essay about this very Brooklyn phenomenon. My previous neighborhood, Park Slope – which certainly ranked high in writers-per-capita – was an absolute trove of book giveaways. Of course the books themselves are a treasure, but there's also the feeling of being part of a community of readers.