The new bookstore bringing magic to Brooklyn

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From CNN:

When you think of Brooklyn as a hot travel destination, what comes to mind?
Boutique hotels, artisanal restaurants and hip cocktail bars?

Some visitors may come to visit the Brooklyn Museum of Art or stroll through Prospect Park.
But a bookstore?

It may seem unlikely, but this spring a humble bookstore is set to become one of Brooklyn’s newest attractions.
Of course, this is not just any bookstore, but one with indie cred, literary roots and a fan base that already includes Brooklyn’s over-supply of resident writers.

With a perch on Smith Street in the Cobble Hill neighborhood, Books Are Magic is perfectly situated to become a destination for anyone looking to tap into the borough’s literary mystique.

“I certainly know that’s how I like to travel—by visiting bookstores,” says novelist Emma Straub, who is opening Books Are Magic with her husband Michael Fusco-Straub and investors, Eddie and Martine Joyce.”

“If you’re in Nashville and you don’t go to see Parnassus, you’re a crazy person. Or if you’re in Los Angeles and you don’t go to Skylight and Book Soup. Seattle and Elliott Bay Bookstore.”

On a recent visit to Portland, Oregon, Straub, who has two young sons, went to iconic bookstore Powell’s Books every day of their trip.

“And we bought books every single day we were there.”

While she hopes that Books Are Magic will similarly appear on tourists’ itineraries, the store is more of a “hyper-local” enterprise.

“It’s entirely selfish,” she says.

“We live in the neighborhood and when [local indie bookseller] BookCourt closed [at the end of 2016], we needed a bookstore to walk to—and we knew everyone else here did, too.”

. . . .

The Books Are Magic team plans to stand up for local writers, too.

“We want to celebrate the fact that we have a lot of homegrown talent,” says Straub, who says this extends to the lesser-known talents in the area as well as the big names.

“We are going to have a little sign up by the register that says, ‘Are you a local Brooklyn author? Please identify yourself so that we can make sure to carry your book.'”

“I know what Martin Amis looks like, and he lives nearby, so we’ll get his books,” she says. “But there are a lot of other people who I may not recognize.

“We don’t want a writer who lives around the corner to come in and feel sad because they’re not on the shelf.”

Link to the rest at CNN and thanks to Dave for the tip.