The best Barnes and Noble is just north of Grand Central; it's at Fifth Avenue and 46th. It has a functional bathroom, it has proximity to Broadway, and it has a well-organized flow of traffic by the cash register. (If you go up to the Upper East Side, it's *chaos* at *that* particular cash register.) I strongly recommend getting yourself a cup of tea and sitting with an unpurchased copy of "Changing My Mind," by Julian Barnes. No one will care if you don't spend money on that book. The stockholders within Barnes and Noble are *not* suffering. The book is a short account of how Julian Barnes once disliked the works of E.M. Forster--until he grew older and changed his mind. He realized that Forster was sort of saucy and naughty. (Barnes had missed this fact for several years.) For whatever reason, I think this essay is charming. Barnes especially likes "Where Angels Fear to Tread." There was one unfortunate scene from my own life at the midtown Barnes an...
A spooky story beloved by my family is "The Night It Rained," by Alvin Schwartz. It's immediately unnerving. A man is driving in the night when he spots an underdressed boy in the rain. He offers a sweater to the boy (Jim), and Jim becomes a passenger in the car. The man drives Jim home and says, "I'll just stop by tomorrow for the sweater." But the next day, the man meets Jim's mother, who is confused. "My son is not alive," she says. "He died last year." The narrator then visits Jim's tombstone--and the borrowed sweater is draped over the lettering. I love this story because it demands that the reader make inferences. We can imagine that the man visits Jim's house during daylight hours because he is concerned about possible neglect (and the sweater is a helpful thing to pretend to focus on). We might also guess that Jim is spotted walking on the road because this is the region where the *living* Jim was once struck by a ca...