Get the latest gossip
Sarah McNally’s Book Club
The owner of the McNally Jackson literary empire is reshaping the city’s reading life.
McNally generates what seems like millions of ideas in a single conversation, and over the months I spent with her, she considered a new imprint, a new shop, and a nationwide book-of-the-month program and even mused with enough seriousness about addressing homelessness that I wondered whether she intended to run for office. McNally remained a fixture at the stores; for years, unlike most owners, she insisted her managers put her on the weekly work schedule, and she would often restock shelves herself, befriending and gossiping with her staff, hopping back and forth over a blurry line between employee and employer. “I want to do something a little more ostentatious, more truly helpful.” She plans to build a network of book clubs and what she called “reading festivals” with featured speakers — “Imagine a Broadway star, an art auctioneer, a professor, and a real-estate agent discussing Ovid, slowly, deliberately, respectfully.” (She is in fact now ruminating on another bookstore, also for the Upper West Side.)
Or read this on VULTURE