Brooklyn Private Library
We're closed today!
There was a bookcase in Maya auntie's condo that I wanted to get rid of. The problem was, it was/is a built-in bookcase. Not only would it cost a lot of money to remove, its absence would negatively affect the property value. So, in an odd power move, I started a library out of the apartment. (Not a library, but more of a book depository. Similar to the one in Texas from which L.H. Oswald shot J.F. Kennedy.)
One of my goals in life is to write a manuscript. Unfortunately, I don't have access to all the books I would need to shape and develop my writing efforts. There aren't enough libraries or bookstores, and certainly no 24/7 locations, and while I'm not looking to address the latter as a societal concern, I think I have a solution to each of my problems. If I solicit donations, I can fill auntie's shelves with books. It would turn a negative into a positive -- an eyesore into a vision. From there, I'd be able to read, learn, and read some more. It would also allow donors -- the members of Brooklyn Private Library -- to get their hands on some great books as well. The hours would be odd, and I wouldn't have ten million books on hand, but you wouldn't need local residency to be a member, you'd just need to donate a book. And yes, if things work out, you'll get a library card to lord over your friends. Some may keep the books, so I should probably have fines, but let's not get too crazy. For now, I'm building the library, so if you can donate any of the books below, you're welcome to borrow one.
Finally, write to me via email. We'll meet at your convenience, preferably somewhere down-to-earth and expensive. Whenever you want a book, just email me. If someone's around, we'll meet up and give you a book.
Regarding the picture: I got my hands on a first edition copy of The Catcher of the Rye, which isn't worth anything because it's used. That said, the fact that it was an actual library book in the 1950s is obviously super cool. What's funny, though, is that Cousin Debbie -- Debbie Castanha, my fourth-favorite writer and dear friend -- saw a picture of the book of the book before I put up this site.
Her response? A week later, I received a package in the mail, and it was a brand new, paperback copy of The Catcher in the Rye.
Speaking of books, you don't know her, but that is textbook Cousin Debbie. Straight out of the playbook Cousin Debbie.
Anyway. Here are some books we could use:
An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Native Son, Richard Wright
The Beautiful and the Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Condominium, Daniel Falatko
Clockers, Richard Price
Play it As it Lays, Joan Didion
Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Appointment in Samarra, John O’Hara
Jaws, Peter Benchley
A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
The Wings of the Dove, Henry James
A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
Manhattan, When I Was Young, Mary Cantwell
The Golden Bowl, Henry James
Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
Howard's End, E.M. Forster
Go Tell it On the Mountain, James Baldwin
The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
London Fields, Martin Amis
The Girls, Emma Cline
Deliverance, James Dickey
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence
Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf
The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth
The Edible Woman, Margaret Atwood
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehesi Coates
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham
The Awakening, Kate Chopin
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Grant, Ron Chernow
The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
A House for Mr. Biswas, V.S. Naipaul
The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz
The Password to Larkspur Lane, Carolyn Keene
Room with a View, E.M. Forster
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
The Adventures of Augie March, by Saul Bellow
Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow
The Call of the Wild, Jack London
Runaway, Alice Munro
Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell
Ironweed, William Kennedy
The Postman Rings Twice, James M. Cain
Glass Century, Ross Barkan
The Doodler of Dimashq, Kirthi Jayakumar
A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry
Sophie's Choice, William Styron
The Boys in the Boat, Daniel James Brown
The Magus, John Fowles
Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
Under the Net, Iris Murdoch
Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton
The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles
The Ginger Man, J.P. Donleavy
Biography of X, Catherine Lacey
84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Love Story, Erich Segal
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkington
The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing