Omss-Culture: Culturebox: Love in Bookstores



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culturebox Love in Bookstores Browsing customers often circle each other like timid sharks. By Emma Straub Updated Monday, April 4, 2011, at 7:01 AM ET Several years ago, when I was not a bookstore employee but merely a regular customer, I wrote up BookCourt, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, for the Village Voice's Best of New York. My entry posited, though I had no evidence to support it, that single people claimed the bookstore was good for finding romance. It seemed to me the sort of thing that was probably true, in the same way that I assume good-looking waitresses and bartenders often get phone numbers slipped to them on cocktail napkins. Bookstores are magnets for people with an hour to kill, and isn't that when one's eyes are most likely to wander, to scan other people's faces for signs of friendliness? The wide tables of alluring, face-up hardcovers and paperbacks invite lingering fingers and quiet conversation. Surely, Brooklyn's single population was using the bookstore (and others like it) as a backdrop for finding true love. To continue reading, click here. Emma Straub's debut story collection, Other People We Married, was published in February. She works part-time as a bookseller at BookCourt. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE \| READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Hitchens: Hamid Karzai's Despicable Response to the Quran Burning in Florida LCD Soundsystem: How a Chubby Old Guy Became King of the Hipsters Don't Walk Out of Super. It Gets Really Good After 42 Minutes.	Advertisement
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Now playing: *Slate V, a video-only site from the world's leading online magazine. Visit Slate V* at www.slatev.com.
culturebox Love in Bookstores Browsing customers often circle each other like timid sharks. By Emma Straub Updated Monday, April 4, 2011, at 7:01 AM ET Several years ago, when I was not a bookstore employee but merely a regular customer, I wrote up BookCourt, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, for the Village Voice's Best of New York. My entry posited, though I had no evidence to support it, that single people claimed the bookstore was good for finding romance. It seemed to me the sort of thing that was probably true, in the same way that I assume good-looking waitresses and bartenders often get phone numbers slipped to them on cocktail napkins. Bookstores are magnets for people with an hour to kill, and isn't that when one's eyes are most likely to wander, to scan other people's faces for signs of friendliness? The wide tables of alluring, face-up hardcovers and paperbacks invite lingering fingers and quiet conversation. Surely, Brooklyn's single population was using the bookstore (and others like it) as a backdrop for finding true love. To continue reading, click here. Emma Straub's debut story collection, Other People We Married, was published in February. She works part-time as a bookseller at BookCourt. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE \| READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Hitchens: Hamid Karzai's Despicable Response to the Quran Burning in Florida LCD Soundsystem: How a Chubby Old Guy Became King of the Hipsters Don't Walk Out of Super. It Gets Really Good After 42 Minutes.	Advertisement
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Ideas on how to make something better? Send an e-mail to slatenewsletter@nl.slate.com. Copyright 2011 The Slate Group \| Privacy Policy The Slate Group \| c/o E-mail Customer Care \| 1350 Connecticut Ave NW Suite 410 \| Washington, D.C. 20036

Culturebox: Love in Bookstores

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