new york book finds
New York used book finds, except for the last one which I bought new at Studio 54. I wanted to buy a hundred books but I only allowed myself what could fit into my backpack.
We had just watched a documentary on Anaïs Nin when I stumbled across Volume Four of her diaries in Alabaster Books. Soaking wet and haggard from the sky opening up and dumping sheets of rain over us, I’m surprised they even let us in. But they did, and they had about a million books that I wished to add to my collection. Next time I think I need to bring a bigger backpack.
This quote is one of my favorites as it’s something I’ve tried to live all of my life.
“The secret of a full life is to live and relate to others as if they might not be there tomorrow, as if you might not be there tomorrow.”
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is Murakami’s memoir. I’ve already read it but it’s wonderful and this cover is everything. I came across it in Codex Books off Bleecker in the East Village. There’s a quote in the book that runs through me so true and resonates with how I often feel as a writer in solitude.
“In certain areas of my life, I actively seek out solitude. Especially for someone in my line of work, solitude is, more or less, an inevitable circumstance. Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person’s heart and dissolve it. You could see it, too, as a kind of double-edged sword. It protects me, but at the same time steadily cuts away at me from the inside.”
Going To Meet The Man is a heartbreaking book of short stories by James Baldwin. I wish I could remember the name of the shop where I found it. It was tiny like most shops in New York, and it had a life size cardboard cutout of Bob Dylan and the largest selection of Dylan books in the city. But as much as I love Dylan, it was Baldwin who stole my heart that day. He’s stolen my heart on many especially with quotes like this one…
“You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.”
I found Light in August by Faulkner on the sidewalk in Greenwich hidden in a stack of books for $1. The cover alone had my heart pounding, worn and dissolving in my fingers as I opened it to smell the pages. The poetic magic that lives within these pages is everything. I love the feeling of the quote below. I feel every word so alive and so honest.
“It is just dawn, daylight: that gray and lonely suspension filled with the peaceful and tentative waking of birds. The air, inbreathed, is like spring water. He breathes deep and slow, feeling with each breath himself diffuse in the natural grayness, becoming one with loneliness and quiet that has never known fury or despair. “That was all I wanted,” he thinks, in a quiet and slow amazement. “That was all, for thirty years. That didn’t seem to be a whole lot to ask in thirty years.”
I bought Red Light Winter by Adam Rapp after watching his incredible play, The Sound Inside at Studio 54. I devoured it in one sitting and it reminded me how much I love reading plays.
And The Sound Inside felt like a true gift from the universe. It came to me on the side of a bus. The ad itself is intriguing, almost unsettling, which is totally my vibe. I love the feeling of being a little shaken. But the title is what really pulled on me.
The Sound Inside. I didn’t know what it was or what it meant, but I knew I had to find out. A psychological thriller about a writer starring Mary-Louise Parker.
Sold. Booked. Shaken.
I don’t think I’ve ever resonated with a play on such a deep level. Adam Rapp truly gets me—the neurosis of being a writer, the inner rage that comes with trying to create something meaningful in a world of inauthenticity, the detachment from reality that so easily creeps in when one gives in to writing and creating from their core, and so many more sentiments that surface in my world.
New York never disappoints when I’m in need of a heavy dose of inspiration.
