I just returned from a very quick trip to NY. The weekend didn't turn out as planned at all – one of my daughters got quite sick while we were there, and we ended up in the hotel room all day yesterday instead of at the Broadway shows we had planned to attend. However, when she finally went to sleep last night, I had an hour-long window to get out of the hotel and go to the Strand before it closed. I halved that hour by taking a cab to the Strand, discovering that I had left my wallet at the hotel, making the cab driver take me back to the hotel to retrieve my wallet, and then returning to the Strand in the same cab. That's how badly I wanted to go.
So I walked in the door of the store around 9:55 PM, and it closed at 10:30. However, while I was there I was able to find half-price hardcover review copies of three books I have had my eye on (and have written about here): Hello Goodbyeby Emily Chenoweth, The GIrls from Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow, and Sitting Practice by Caroline Adderson. I also picked up a copy of Julie Buxbaum's After You (she's a fellow HLS alum and I have been intrigued by her), and a used copy of Matthew Klam's collection of short stories, Sam the Cat. The latter was an impulse buy from the used fiction section. I rarely read short stories, but these looked good.
Because I really needed five new books to add to the TBR piles.
But it made me so happy to go there and browse and find those books, at the end of a pretty long day, so it was totally worth it. And I was in the checkout line by 10:25. And, I took the subway back.
I love the Strand.