It’s Saturday, which means it’s time once again for a Hungry Mind bookmark. Another tiny one from the late 90s.
It’s Saturday, which means it’s time once again for a Hungry Mind bookmark. Another tiny one from the late 90s.
Soundtrack for the weekend.
The CD came in the mail today — almost three weeks early. Two songs are already available online, including a whimsical yet surprisingly moving video for I Contain Multitudes.
Rounding out this NYC week is the Strand. I wish I could say why, but I’ve always merely liked rather than loved the Strand, despite it seeming, on paper, to be my ideal book store.
(I’m sure it’s a coincidence, but they removed the bag check after this cell phone symphony.)
Now this is how you do a used book store. (I thought I also had a bookmark from when it was Gryphon, but it hasn’t turned up.)
Maybe it was in its decrepit twilight, but I found Gotham forbiddingly hostile and risibly pompous. Despite a rich inventory, I spent as little money as possible on my sole visit and vowed never to return. I shed no tear on learning of its humiliating and predictable demise.
Sorry, everyone: yet another dead book store. I found this inside an older book I received from a friend.
The other day, as we were talking about something else, I made a reference to the “Co-op Wars” of the ’70s. I got a skeptical side-eye. Yes, it really was A Thing.
Housing Works is such a cool place. And possibly my favorite bookmark: good cardstock, great reminder.
For about five years, I lived an easy walk or a short Streetcar ride away from the Burnside store. I arrived in PDX with 74 boxes of books. When I moved away, I had only 38. Maybe you’ve bought one of my cast-offs.
I think this was the color during the late aughts.
📚 What I finished this week.
Ah, the Hungry Mind. I started going here when I was nine to collect Tintin books. This was my book store. We were the same age and I thought we would grow old together.
(It’s hard to tell, but this is an absurdly small bookmark, about half the width of a business card.)
Lovely shop. I’ve seen it turn up as a location in TV shows when they want the characters to seem refined and sophsticated.
The bookmark is a heavy cardstock, so it’s ideal for thicker books and especially anything with deckled edges.
🔗 “Vintage Classics launches new series of pocket-sized translations”
Great little shop. Perfect name for a used book store. It was in Linden Hills, next door to the Dunn Brothers.
I think I must have found this tucked in a book I bought somewhere else, since I have no memory of ever visiting this bookstore.
(Also: apparently not dead!)
This post from the Hennepin County Library Tumblr caught my eye today, and I remembered that I posted a picture a while back of the Stone Arch Bridge, the Third Avenue Bridge, and the Hennepin Ave Bridge.
Well, that was fun: I flipped through a bunch of books and took a bunch of pictures. Buckle up. Three bookmarks down, fifty-nine to go.
City Lights is a great bookstore, of course, and I try to go every time I’m in the City. But if you told me I could go to only one San Francisco bookstore, I think I would choose Green Apple.
(And I checked their website. They’re still alive!)
📚 What I finished this week. (Bonus! Emo Phillips joke included at no extra charge!)
St Mark’s was small but mighty. A regular stop when I lived in the gravity well of NYC. But I’m 0 for 2 in the category of “Bookstores that still exist.” I’ll try to find a non-moribund bookmark for tomorrow so that it doesn’t seem like I’m taking pictures of headstones…
Two bookmarks that resurfaced in old books around the house. The Odegard’s at Victoria Crossing closed in January 1996. (The C*lhoun Square store stayed open a few more years, if memory serves.)
List #17
Criminal — an account of a dream, found in a notebook from 2013. (Recently, I’ve been going through old notebooks, looking for raw material for new poems, or blog posts, or whatever.)