Books are Weapons

On Collecting

Style reveals the man. The building of a library is an act of style, an expression of what we are and a good measure of who we are. Collecting is an act of self-realization. One collects books and builds a library to create an intensified environment. It is a philosophical statement as this room is […]
From the Library of John Waters

Reading as a Pleasant Deviation: A Guided Tour of John Waters Library I was not a book fanatic until I was fifteen and discovered Genet and Burroughs and all these Grove Press books and thought, thank God, I’m not that abnormal. That opened up a whole new world to me. Those were my friends. Tennessee […]
From the Library of Albert Murray

That shelf is where my real stuff is. See it start with Joyce and come up to Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald. That’s it. That’s the contemporary literature I read. Those people in those books up there on the shelves provide a solid base to enable us to get to it all. There’s Mann’s Joseph and […]
Susanna Moore on the Book as Aphrodisiac

(photo: a gift from the author) My first acquaintance with Susanna just precedes the publication of her first novel, My Old Sweetheart, when we “met cute”. I was selling books at a carriage trade shop on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that several of her friends frequented; our bi-coastal movie clientele, it turned out, […]
From the Library of Alan Pryce-Jones

From my diary June 25, 1991 Mr. Pryce-Jones’s houses are on John Street in the heart of Old Newport. Three mid-Ninteenth Century saltboxes. His principle residence is at 46 where we found a note addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Thometz asking us to check in at #50. I hadn’t been prepared for a compound. The […]
Fran Lebowitz On Reading

As told to Kurt Thometz. I’m not a collector. I don’t care about things like that. I not a collector because I’m not that organized. I’m not grown-up enough to collect things, but I have acquired a stellar collection of odd books, weirdo books, books that don’t fit easily into categories. I have a very […]
From the Library of Diana Vreeland

“Let’s suppose you were a total stranger – and a very good friend. That’s a good combination. What would you want to know about me? And how would you go about finding it out? To me the books I’ve read are the gateway. My life has been more influenced by books than by any other […]
On Bibliophiles

Reading, the unpunished vice, promises, as most vices do, a finer world within the world. Beyond the narrow realm of our senses is the greater reality retained in and contained by that cumbersome and collectable commodity, the book. While all book collectors consider themselves bibliophiles, most bibliophiles perceive collecting as the precious sport of a […]
Chet Baker

Deep in a Dream By James Gavin As Though I Had Wings By Chet Baker At 3 a.m. on May 13, 1988, Chet Baker nodded out, threw himself out, or was thrown out of, a hotel room window in Amsterdam, quite as if he had wings. Long ago and far away, I dreamed a […]
Pimpnology

Pimpnology: Regarding Players, Hoes, Johns & The Life “Police, politicians, businessmen, lawyers, dope dealers, prostitutes, pimps – all are dependent on one another, yet all prey on one another. In modern urban life, none of us is immune to this kind of social network; the very life of the city is made up of such […]

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M.I.T.E. Live

Books Are Weapons and Jumel Terrace Books Presents: M.I.T.E. In the Upper Room. Anteo Fabris, guitar. Adam Nakhla-Thometz, keyboards. 07.25.14.

“I would like to know if you think maybe you are a racist too. You seem to be. “

I know better than to lower myself to replying to internets slander but just this once I’ll make an exception. An Enquiring Mind posits: “I would like to know if you think maybe you are a racist too. You seem to be. Perhaps not everyone is interested in black culture as you are. In addition, […]

Nina Mae, the Birthday Princess’s Uptown Saturday Night

Saturday evening, March 15th, a full winter moon over West 162nd Street & Jumel Terrace, and some enchanted one it was. It might have been the most Uptown New York cocktail party I’ve been to since the 1980s. There were black & white movie people, attractive people, very well dressed, the gentlemen in tailored vintage, […]

The Book Problem, Pt. 2

03.18.14 Mayor Bill de Blasio, City Hall, New York, NY 10007 To: Mayor Bill De Blasio. cc: Scott Stringer, Jimmy Van Bramer, Anthony Marx, Vianella Rivas. Dear Mayor De Blasio, As you’re undoubtedly aware, the first plaque bearing your name on the city’s landscape is on the Washington Heights branch of the New York Public […]