The Life and Times of a Navy Husband

Deciding which of New York’s bookstores to visit should not have been difficult. There are a lot of choices—Barnes & Noble, Borders, Housing Works, St. Mark’s, Gotham Book Mart—but the one to see is the one we (kind of) stumbled on: Strand Books.

We arrived in the city with a long mental list of potential things to do/see. These included: the Guggenheim, the Met, the MoMA, the Apple Store, Ground Zero, FAO Schwartz, Union Square Market, one of the above bookstores, Central Park, and a ‘real New York pizza parlor.’ Obviously, we couldn’t do everything, so we decided on a couple things each day and let serendipity take care of the rest, which is how we typically tackle a new place when we travel.

As it happened, on Wednesday morning (our second day), after visiting Union Square Market, Danielle spotted a young woman with a Strand Books tote and asked her if it was close by. It was: just one block over and one block down.

It didn’t look like ‘18 miles of books’ from the outside, but, inside, it was immediately clear where George Will first came up with the original phrase, which was ‘8 miles of books.’

Once inside we had to check our bags, and then we were off. Danielle and Sean and I quickly got separated—thankfully, Danielle and Sean were together! I wandered amongst the display tables and found one marked ‘The Strand 80.’ A Strand employee was standing nearby, so I asked him if these books were supposed to be the 80 books everyone should read. ‘Oh, not necessarily,’ he said. ‘They’re the books our customers voted for. In fact, some of them probably shouldn’t be read by anyone.’ I looked over the selections. They included The DaVinci Code. ‘That explains this,’ I said, holding up Dan Brown’s 300 pages of monkey doo-doo. He said, ‘That’s certainly one of the ones we’re ashamed of.’

After browsing around and assuring myself that there was far too much to take in during just one visit, I loitered around the front of the store until Danielle and Sean found me. We each chose a book (I picked out The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Danielle picked out The Zombie Survival Guide) and picked out T-shirts, the only souvenirs we brought home. Oh, except for the Starbucks New York mug. And the Zabar’s mug.

Places like the Strand are almost enough to make me consider living there one day.