What Zadie Smith’s Students Are Reading

We have a display shelf in the store that showcases required textbooks for some of Columbia University’s courses this semester. We often get inquiries from students wanting to know “who’ s requiring what?” We thought it would be fun to share some of them with you. This semester author Zadie Smith is teaching a Fiction Seminar called “Sense and Sensibility”. There are 15 books listed for the course. Here are ten of them, visually displayed. Click on each book cover to learn more:

Positively nice!

Recently, some folks who have visited our store have said nice things about us:

At Antiquitopia:

I was wandering around Book Culture (formerly Labyrinth) …and happened upon some very surprising book bargains. I go there for their bargains. They have tons of reduced priced books on their staircase and on the tables upstairs. And in the latter place, I found these two books: (read the rest here) (thanks Jared!)

At The Diary of the Purple Passport:

…go upstairs and you’ll find rows and rows of books. There are some interesting titles in addition to the books ordered by University faculty. It was a personable shop… (thanks Emily!)

At Yelp:

The management are helpful….It’s the best in the neighborhood, and I shop there whenever I can. Don’t miss their tote-bags. (thanks Andrew!)

Book Culture’s Give Back Program

We’ve started a Give Back Program to benefit schools and non-profits in the neighborhood. It’s easy – organizations/schools join up with us, create an account and then let their members/parents know that shopping at Book Culture benefits their group. Each time a customer designates (at the register, via phone, or on our website) that their purchases should go to support a certain school, Book Culture will donate 15% of sales from each purchase.

Five schools have already joined, and earlier this week we held a special “Give Back Shopping Night” for one of the schools. Members of faculty and staff, as well as parents and students, from Bard High School Early College came to shop during a special three hour period. There were refreshments, door prizes and readings from both a student, Molly Wyrick-Flaxe, and a parent, the author Andre Aciman. See photos of the event here.

Contact Chris Doeblin (chris@bookculture.com) if you are interested in signing up your school for the program.

Celebrate Independence!

We’ve fallen behind on updating this blog, and hope to change that in the coming weeks. We’ll be posting photos from our spring events, and sharing news about upcoming summer happenings, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, we’ve also failed to mention that we are IndieBound! Last month the American Booksellers Association announced a new initiative that honors and supports local businesses, especially community bookstores throughout the nation that celebrate free-thinking and unique retailers.

We’ve got the Declaration of IndieBound up in our store and these Ten Reasons to Shop Local on our website. You can learn more about the IndieBound mission here. In the coming months, we’ll share additional news about this initiative , as well as an alliance with a similar spirit being created by independent booksellers in NYC.

This July 4th Weekend, remember to celebrate and support all your local independent retailers!

Sales Tax Fairness

Some thoughts from Book Culture’s owner, Chris Doeblin, on sales tax and the greenness of local business:

Governor Spitzer has proposed a plan (the Internet Sales Tax provision) that will require out-of-state online companies to collect New York State sales tax on goods they send to addresses in New York. One estimate suggests the state could be losing out on $50 million a year. Independent business organizations have been bringing the issue to Albany for years, but our current budget hardship is certainly the door opener here. It’s our issue because books are the first big item sold on the Internet and the mainstay of Amazon.

The latest twist is Amazon’s reply to the plan. They have sent Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president for global public policy, to Albany to battle the plan. Personally, I have had enough of giant corporations molding public policy with elite executives walking into our halls of governance and justice. I prefer to have public policy support independents, small business, diversity of ownership and taxation fairness.

Many excellent articles have reported on this news. I direct you to Saul Hansell’s article in the New York Times on February 13. And I ask you to write to Governor Spitzer and support us by backing his plan to require companies such as Amazon to collect sales tax. The sales tax that we collect for ourselves makes us part of our communities. On the one hand, no one wants to be taxed – but let’s face it— we all want all the social benefits that our taxes provide us with.

Make a visit to Morningside

Thanks to folks in the book business and around NYC who have welcomed us to our new web real estate. We look forward to talking “bookshop” here, as well as sharing news, reviews and interviews.

And, although things in the store are a just a tad hectic right now (“the usual seasonal upheaval” as some have dubbed Rush) we’d love you to make a visit to Morningside Heights one of these days — if you haven’t already been.

We’re centrally located between two well-known landmarks:

You can’t miss the neon of Tom’s Diner (made famous by Suzanne Vega and Seinfeld), on the corner of 112th and Broadway. And just a block further east, the street dead-ends into the magnificent Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Smack dab in the middle of these two famous spots is where you’ll find us – right next door to the post office. A thoroughly nourishing NYC block — for the mind, soul, and stomach!

There’s much more to see and do in Morningside, and we’ll be sure to share additional news from the ‘hood in coming months. For now, though, it’s back to kicking off another successful semester of course book sales.