Found in an old church in Massachusetts, Newtonville Books is run by Mary Cotton, a former employee of the store, and her husband, a former customer. Here Mary shares what they’d do with infinite space and why she loves their fiction section

What’s your favorite section in the store?

This is a trick question, kin to asking “Which is your favorite child?” (thankfully, we only have one) or, worse, “What is your favorite ice cream flavor?” (Black raspberry and butter crunch, don’t make me choose.) So I will start by dancing around it. Every section has an alluring promise to me — even our Education section, which is mostly test prep books, makes me think “Do I still have time to take the GMAT? I could totally still become a… whatever that’s for.” Ditto with the travel section, and the travel writing section — so many places I could go, places just waiting for me to read about.

But the real answer is Fiction. It’s always been Fiction. I’m proud of our backlist (this is something only a bookstore owner would ever say), and I like seeing older titles next to brand new ones, the Deluxe Penguin editions of Jane Austen next to Dover ones. Because I do the ordering, I have a good grasp of what titles are on the shelves, but sometimes I’ll stumble across something unfamiliar and I have to pause and check it out. It’s our biggest and most popular section, and contains multitudes.

If you had infinite space what would you add?

“Infinite space” is so suggestive. I would start with a cafe where one could order coffee, wine, or toasted everything bagel sandwiches with hummus and lettuce and tomatoes and pickles, and where we could have Book Lovers’ Trivial Pursuit evenings. Then I would add a giant oak tree to our children’s section where children could gather around for story time and climb into the branches with a book to read on their own. Then I would add a second floor with a giant stairway leading up to it, and a movie screen that could be pulled down from the ceiling and people could gather around to watch films based on books, maybe with some actual old rows of theater chairs like the one they have at BookCourt (again). An enormous art section (see previous answer) where coffee table art books could have sample copies lying open on dark wood tables for customers to flip through, and shrink-wrapped copies on the shelves so someone could buy a copy in pristine condition. Worn leather chairs that you could sink into. Books in other languages. Every single time I go into a bookstore, I find something that makes me think “Oh, I wish we could do that!” so this allegedly “infinite space” would get filled quickly.

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What do you do better than any other bookstore?

The handwriting on our Events chalkboard (mine) is pretty first-rate.

What’s the craziest situation you’ve ever had to deal with in the store?

Once we had a celebrated writer read with a first-time novelist — we often pair our authors, as it’s more interesting that way and more likely that people will show up. At the signing table after the reading, the first time novelist starting ranting, to the family members of his waiting patiently in line for a signed book, about how expensive hard copies of books were and why on earth would anyone actually want to buy one? The other writer and I stared at each other in disbelief before I casually removed his unsigned books from the table and put them on the returns shelf in back. He didn’t notice.

A bookstore job requires a level of intelligence and experience that is not reflected in the hourly wage

What’s your earliest/best memory about visiting a bookstore as a child?

I grew up in the suburbs outside Buffalo, NY, and there was no independent bookstore nearby. (I didn’t visit the lovely Talking Leaves, in the city, until I was much older.) So, as a child, visiting the bookstore meant going to the Waldenbooks at the Eastern Hills Mall. It was still incredible to me. Those were the days when I read books that were part of a series, and there would be entire shelves of numbered volumes in front of me. Nancy Drew, The Baby-sitters Club, Sweet Valley High, and countless other books. I’d be thrilled to get a new one, its pages perfectly flat, and couldn’t wait to crack it open. I don’t remember my mother ever letting us leave the store without a book. Later, my high school boyfriend and I would take pilgrimages to the new Borders (it was a great Borders in those days — the fiction section had everything! Every Vonnegut novel, not just Slaughter-house Five and Cat’s Cradle) and later to this tiny used bookstore in the first floor of a house that seemed to only exist for two summers but where we found countless yellowed classics that cost a few dollars each.

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If you weren’t running/working at a bookstore what would you be doing?

If I weren’t running a bookstore, I would be working at one, and if I weren’t working at one, I would be some lucky bookstore’s absolute best customer ever, coming by every evening after I got off the train from whatever job my GMAT prep book prepared me for, just to see what new books came in that day. As long as I had a train commute for reading, and as long as I still got to talk to people around books, even if from the other side of the counter, I think I’d be ok.

What’s been the biggest surprise about running a bookstore?

How hard it is to say goodbye to booksellers when they inevitably move on to other things — school, or jobs that pay real money. A bookstore job requires a level of intelligence and experience that is not reflected in the hourly wage, and so we tend to be a sort of way station where we are graced with brilliant employees who will eventually have to leave us. I knew that from working at a bookstore — people and personalities come and go — but I didn’t realize how hard it was as an employer. It breaks my heart every time an employee has to move on. I wish I could shower them with the financial incentives their brilliance and enthusiasm merit.

The staff shelf

What are Newtonville Books’ booksellers reading?

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi (2010). Nicolle recommends: “In a future where we’ve run out of natural resources, a teenaged boy named Nailer must break down old ships in order to reuse the material. Nailer is still small enough to fit into tight ducts and collect copper wire, but soon he’ll be too big and everything hangs on his ability to join a group of adults or find a pocket of crude oil within the belly of the ghost ships. A perfect gift for the teenager in your life.”

Nicolle recommends: “In a future where we’ve run out of natural resources, a teenaged boy named Nailer must break down old ships in order to reuse the material. Nailer is still small enough to fit into tight ducts and collect copper wire, but soon he’ll be too big and everything hangs on his ability to join a group of adults or find a pocket of crude oil within the belly of the ghost ships. A perfect gift for the teenager in your life.” 10:04 by Ben Lerner (2014). Matt recommends: “The narrator of Ben Lerner’s 10:04 is Ben Lerner. But Lerner as a writer (and a narrator) is witty, acerbic, self-deprecating, and exceedingly intelligent. We follow him as he writes this novel (meta!) tutors a third-grader, tries to help his best friend conceive, and lives through two superstorms that hit New York City. By turns novel, poem, science project, and philosophical manifesto on art’s relation to its own commodification, Lerner’s book is an absolute pleasure.”