What is it about a bookstore? You walk in planning to browse for a few minutes, and somehow an hour later you’re still wandering the stacks with an armful of books you can’t seem to put down.
For this week’s episode, our guest host, MJ Franklin, and the producer Sarah Diamond take a field trip to a local bookstore, McNally Jackson Seaport, at the southern tip of Manhattan. There, they talk with the owner, Sarah McNally, about what it’s actually like to run a bookstore. Then MJ sits down with Jennifer Harlan, an editor at the Book Review, to talk about The Times’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/07/29/books/bookstores-midtown-manhattan-nyc.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">new bookstore crawl series</a>, the bookstores she grew up loving and why bookshops seem to be having a moment.
Of course, no bookstore episode would be complete without some book recommendations. MJ and Jen share some of their favorite books about bookstores and booksellers, including a romance set in a small-town bookshop and a memoir about living inside Shakespeare and Company in Paris.
Books discussed on this episode:
“Switzy,” by Emma Cline
“Delicate Edible Birds,” by Lauren Groff
“Book Lovers,” by Emily Henry
“Monogamy,” by Sue Miller
“Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare and Co.,” by Jeremy Mercer
“The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore,” by Evan Friss
“A Marvelous Light,” by Freya Marske
“The Rachel Incident,” by Caroline O’Donoghue
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We Want to Hear From You
We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to thebookreview@nytimes.com.
Credits
“The Book Review” podcast is hosted this week by MJ Franklin and produced by Amy Pearl, Sarah Diamond and Patricia Sulbarán. The show is edited by Tracy Mumford and mixed this week by Daniel Ramirez.
Special thanks to Dahlia Haddad and Brooke Minters.
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