What are your bookstore rituals? For example, where do you go first in a store?
I am a sucker for the display tables. I love to browse through the latest releases and staff picks, searching especially for books that haven’t yet come to my attention from another source. After that I tend to make a beeline for the paper products that are the standard equipment of this writer’s life: notebooks, pens, rulers, erasers. I’m forever on the lookout for the “perfect” pen, eraser, pencil bag—you name it. After these two basic needs are met, I trawl the history, mythology and nonfiction sections, which are my preferred genres. Final stop is always the cookbook section, because those books are heavy and I always want more than I can carry.
Tell us about your favorite library from when you were a child.
The Montgomery County Library Bookmobile. It came once a week to a retail parking lot, opposite the elementary school I attended, that was pitted with potholes. It was in this rolling paradise, at the ripe age of 8 years old, that I was introduced to the interlibrary loan request. My elementary school librarian, Kay Wersler, taught me how to scour books for hints on other books to read and request them through the Bookmobile. I still remember the sound of the running engine, the climb up the stairs, the small selection of books to browse and the patient librarian who did not bat an eye when I asked for 19 biographies of Henry VIII.
“There are so many ‘lost’ treasures on the shelves of libraries all over the world.”
While researching your books, has there ever been a librarian or bookseller who was especially helpful, or a surprising discovery among the stacks?
How much space do we have? As an academic who has been doing research since age 8 (see above), it would be far easier to tell you the librarians who weren’t especially helpful (exactly zero). I am enormously fond of the rare books and manuscripts librarians all over the world, but especially at the Bodleian Library and the British Library because I have relied most heavily on their collections. I owe an eternal debt of gratitude to the wise and generous former Keeper of Rare Books at the Bodleian, Julian Roberts, who was very kind when I discovered a John Dee book was missing from his collection and helped me locate another copy. This gave me something of a reputation in the academic community for finding strange items lurking in library collections—not only missing books but also a 16th-century bladder stone kept in a metal tube!
Do you have a favorite bookstore or library from literature?
Marks & Co Antiquarian Booksellers, made famous in Helene Hanff’s 84 Charing Cross Road. I thought all English bookstores were like this one, and discovered to my enormous delight that they were still common in the England of the 1980s, when I visited the country as a solo traveler for the first time.
Do you have a “bucket list” of bookstores and libraries you’d love to visit but haven’t yet? What’s on it?
It is my great dream to shelf read every collection of rare books and manuscripts in the world. This is, of course, not possible, but it is telling that it’s not a particular item or location that attracts me, but the ability to draw books down from the shelves and glance through them looking for interesting notes and marginalia. I include all local public libraries with historical materials in this count, by the way. There are so many “lost” treasures on the shelves of libraries all over the world. I love bringing them to light for their librarians and patrons.
What’s the last thing you checked out from your library or bought at your local bookstore?
The last book I bought was at Moonraker Books on Whidbey Island, Washington. I went in to say hello to Josh Hauser and browse her impeccably curated selection of nonfiction and found a copy of The Connaught Bar: Cocktail Recipes and Iconic Creations by Agostino Perrone, Giorgio Bargiani and Maura Milia. Two of my favorite places collided there by the sea, as I have spent many happy hours in the care of Agostino, Giorgio and Maura (who has moved on to her next adventure now). I took a copy back to the house to inspire future celebrations.
How is your own personal library organized?
By subject. It’s a working library, so there is none of this color-coding or last name malarkey. Give me a subject heading and I’m happy! My cookbooks are even organized this way.
Bookstore cats or bookstore dogs?
Yes. And if there are bookstore horses, please let me know the address of the shop because I will be making a stop soon. With carrots.
What is your ideal bookstore-browsing snack?
I hope you mean post-browsing snack! If so, then it is a cup of tea with milk and honey, and a small pastry of some sort. Madeleines, if they have them, an ordinary shortbread biscuit or chocolate chip cookie if they do not. Coffee walnut cake if I am in England and it is autumn. British bookstores have brilliant little cafes tucked into their corners where you can sit with your pile of books and a nibble before heading back home with your new treasures.
