Spring at Sweet Pickle Books

For most of my life, there have been two kinds of days: days when I journal, and days when I lambast myself for not journaling.

That’s true of other things too.

Days that I exercise and days that I excoriate myself for not exercising

Days when I eat well and days when I criticize myself for not eating well.

Days when I read and days when I self-flaggelate for not reading.

And, as it is with life, it is with this blog.

In the nearly five months since I last wrote here, scarcely a day has passed when I haven’t thought about everything I should be writing.

I read Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and thought: I really should write a post about this.

I spent the holidays in Toronto, where my mom, sister-in-law, and I visited the new Junction location of Type Books and thought: I really should profile this bookstore.

My work book club read Circe and, though I anticipated hating it, I instead adored it and thought: I should write about my metamorphosis into a Madeline Miller Stan.

I traveled to Portland and did a veritable bookstore tour (Green Bean Books! Kinokuniya Books! Daedalus Books! Powell’s!, and, well, you know what I thought I should do and yet didn’t do.

So time passed and the pressure to write something profound, interesting, and big enough to justify my long absence mounted. That pressure became its own problem. So I’m letting the air out of that proverbial balloon by posting about something truly dumb and fun: Sweet Pickle Books.

On a trendy stretch of the Lower East Side just south of one of my favorite clothing stores – Kallmeyer! - and north one of my favorite pizza spots – Scarr’s! – sits what is perhaps New York City’s most curious retail combination: a used bookstore/pickle store.

The combo, which felt charmingly random to me, has a rationale of course: according to the NYPost, store owner Leigh Altshuler was “inspired by her mother’s favorite movie, 1988’s “Crossing Delancey” — about a pickle peddler falling in love with a book dealer on the Lower East Side.”

And after a bruising week at the tail end of an intense work season, an afternoon visit to the silly, self-referential, and rooted-in-place Sweet Pickle Books was just what I needed. THIS is a place where people know how to laugh, how to linger and lounge, how to see the light side of life. A place where you can donate books in exchange for pickles! A place with shelf sections such as “Evil Realities” and “Books you Lied about Reading.” A place where you can get into a long conversation with a store staffer about how plums should be the next pickles and maybe they should open a combination plum and record shop next.”

I bought a Rumaan Alam book, bread and butter pickles, and a cornucopia of charming merch (including matching t-shirts for my poor children). And next time I’m on the block for a slice or a sweater, I’ll definitely be stopping by again.