Diana Spechler, author of Who By Fire, shares a bit about Three Lives & Company in New York’s West Village; you’ll find Who By Fire on the shelves at Three Lives and wherever fine books are sold!
When my first novel hit the shelves last month, a sales rep from my publishing house and I went on a tour of Manhattan bookstores. We popped into stores all over the Village and Midtown, so that I could meet the kind book sellers who were selling my book. Because I love bookstores almost as much as I love Trader Joe’s Wine Shop, I was already fairly well acquainted with most of the stores we visited.
But somehow, perhaps because I live on the East Side, I had never before made my way over to the corner of West 10th and Waverly. So I’d never been to Three Lives & Company.
Three Lives’ reputation preceded it. I had already heard from lots of other book-lovers, “You will die when you see Three Lives.”
Everyone was right. I died.
Three Lives is a throwback to another era of bookstores. One of the first things you will notice when you walk in is that there are no computers. Several times while I was chatting with the store owner, Toby, a customer came in and asked him for a book. Toby would head to the exact shelf, the precise spot, and before he even reached it, say, “Yeah, we’ve already sold three of those. We’ve got two left.” The store’s entire inventory was on display in his brain. His brain was also, apparently, home to a detailed, intelligent memory of every book ever published since, like, I don’t know, the Big Bang.
Three Lives is a small store, but the books are arranged so as to make one think, “Each book is carefully hand-picked. Like rare orchids.” You will want to touch each book on its spine. You will want to take a deep breath and let it out, even though (at the time of my visit) there was a horribly loud construction site (complete with a relentless jack hammer–more like a cliche of a construction site than like an actual construction site) set up right outside the store. You will want to heave a dreamy sigh and drink hot chocolate from a mug. You will want to wear a soft, stretched-out sweater with a hole in it. You will want to listen to scratchy jazz on a record player. You will want to use words like “cozy” and “quaint” and “mom-and-pop.” Mostly, you will want to curl up somewhere with a good book.
Diana Spechler
Author of Who By Fire
www.dianaspechler.com
http://www.harpercollins.com/DianaSpechler
Can you imagine a job which requires you to “pop into bookstores all over the Village and Manhattan”?!? Where do I sign up?!? Thanks, Diana, for inviting us into Three Lives & Company; your prose and that snowy picture make me want to wander around there on a winter day.
Who’s joining me for the Book Club Girl interview with Diana on November 20?