Book/Shop’s New York location at 2 Bond Street turns one this week. Tucked into a bright corner inside the men’s clothing store C’H’C’M, it’s less a bookshop and more a shop about books. More interesting, perhaps, than its hard-to-find titles are its bibliophilic oddities: a Spanish book brush for dusting, Absorene Paper & Book Cleaner for maintenance and hand-sewn canvas book sleeves for travel. Minimal yet lively graphic prints (related to reading, of course) hang on the wall of the shop — which is lined with unique, morsel-size slotted bookshelves, all designed in-house.

With another physical location in Oakland (and online store), the owner Erik Heywood shares with T his leisurely summer reading selections, divided into two lists: one for each coast in which he’s set up shop.

Photo

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

“Sierra Club Handbook,” 1951 edition

“More than a book of rules and bylaws for the legendary conservation society, this book is an Ansel Adams-illustrated guide to a way of thinking about the natural world and our place in it. It’s a way of thinking begun by the explorer John Muir, and it’s had an enormous impact on the culture of northern California.”

“Revenge of the Lawn” by Richard Brautigan

“Brautigan was a fringe Beat writer whose fame came in the later ’60s. There is no way to describe his writing very effectively. His pieces are short, elliptical, impressionistic, beautiful, poetic, profound, highly original and very, very fun. The spirit of his writing, especially in this, his first collection, were like a key to the area for me when I moved here.”

“There Is a Garden in the Mind” by Paul Lee

“One of my favorite walks in the Bay Area is Green Gulch: a long, lush valley lined with organic vegetable farms, terminating in a refuge-like garden of tall rose bushes and wooden benches. It was designed by Alan Chadwick, a major mover of the Organic Movement in California in the 1960s and ’70s. This lyric history of Chadwick and his work was written by his longtime collaborator Paul A. Lee. It’s a feast; a long sustained poem disguised as a biography of a group of people of whom John Cage said, ‘These people live; others haven’t even been born.'”

“Still Lifes and Landscapes” by Richard Diebenkorn

“Diebenkorn was a Bay Area artist par excellence. This new publication of his little-seen still lifes and landscapes captures the palettes of the area like none other. Lemons, roses, ocean views, tree-lined cities.”

Photo

NEW YORK

“Getting Even” by Woody Allen

“A quintessential New York sensibility. I’m always surprised by how few people are aware of Allen’s brilliant short humorous writings from the 1970s. This is the kind of book I’ve read a hundred times and will continue to revisit, laughing every time.”

“New York” by Christopher Morely

“Nearly every transplant to New York ends up reading E.B. White’s essays on the city, but they’d do well to read Christopher Morley’s pieces once they’ve been there for a while. Written in the early decades of the 20th century, they show wonderfully, charmingly, that no matter how much it’s changed, New York is always exactly the same.”

“The Beautiful and Damned” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The first book I bought at the Strand after moving to New York in 2001. Fitzgerald’s 1922 follow-up to ‘This Side of Paradise’ takes place in Manhattan and its surrounding getaway spots, and it was exciting to read this book with a growing recognition of the places, streets and types of New Yorkers described in the book as I explored my new home.”

“Tracking the Marvelous: A Life in the New York Art World” by John Bernard Myers

“This one’s currently on my nightstand. Myers ran the prestigious Tibor de Nagy Gallery in the 1950s and ’60s, striking out on his own as a dealer in the 1970s. This put Myers at the center of an exciting time, and his memoir is stuffed with stories about just about everyone interesting from the midcentury art world of Manhattan.”