During an interview with the New York Times, Sarah McNally, owner of McNally Jackson Books, conducted a tour of her shop on Prince Street in NoLIta, where "customers can lie on a chaise longue, reading potential purchases from a selection of 55,000 volumes. The store is known for its 8,300-title literature collection, organized by geography.... The store tour, past the cafe with books dangling from mobiles (book mobiles?), through sections labeled gender, ideas, drugs, graphic novels and pets, arrives at Ms. McNally's grand gambit against the e-book pestilence: a print-right-now bookmaker called the Espresso Book Machine, the only one in New York City (worldwide, there are about 80)."
"Look," she said as the EBM printed Veiled Women by Marmaduke Pickthall (1913) for a customer. "It's still warm, like cookies fresh out of the oven."
The Times noted that McNally's "whirlwind life suits her: single parent, store owner contemplating a venture on the Upper West Side, leader of one of the store's book clubs (international fiction), member of a Proust reading group, hiker...."
And fervent bookseller McNally believes "that within every great reader there are multitudes of people. And you have to open yourself to all of them. I love British chick lit and I love Proust. Don't judge yourself! There are so many kinds of writing that are great but bear no relation to each other. A Book of Memories by Peter Nadas is like climbing a mountain. Cutting for Stone is like going down a waterslide."
