Keeping this one short and sweet since I was supposed to send this Thursday and then some, uh, other stuff got in the way.
For the New York Times Style desk, I had the pleasure of talking to Bill Hall who runs High Valley Books in Greenpoint. It’s a funny shop in that he’s operated it out of his living room for the last 15 years, and before that he ran it out of his dining room in another apartment in Williamsburg. Bill is such a wonderfully generous spirit and a true New York character. He knows every book in his 50,000 volume collection and has a story about all of them. Please go pay him a visit, just know you have to DM him on Instagram or call his landline to make an appointment. You’re going to the man’s house after all!
Scott Rossi shot the photos for this one and I love how he did these portraits. They remind me of the funny neo-Victorian ones of me and my brothers that my mom forced us to sit for in elementary school.
Speaking of which, I also wrote a small essay about Nina Simone’s cover of “Isn’t it a Pity”, the movie Beau is Afraid, and my mother for Peter C. Baker’s excellent new music magazine Substack Tracks on Tracks. I was beyond flattered that Peter asked me to write for him since I’m sharing column inches with some of my literary heroes. Go subscribe, the stuff that’s been published and the stuff in the pipeline is uniformly excellent.
And if you haven’t heard Simone’s cover of the George Harrison track… please do yourself a favor and click play.
Until next time.