Notes from the back room.

March 14, 2026 · Essay

On the books we cannot finish.

There is a small shelf behind the counter — you've probably never noticed it — where I keep the books I have started and abandoned. It is, embarrassingly, the largest shelf in the shop. This month I want to defend it.

A book you put down at page sixty is not a failure. Sometimes it is the wrong book at the right time. Sometimes the right book at the wrong time. Occasionally, of course, it is just a bad book. But more often it is a kind of conversation that didn't take, the way some conversations at a party simply don't catch — through no fault of either party. We move on, and the book waits.

February 8, 2026 · Reading Notes

Three short novels for a long winter.

Houston winters last about eleven days, but they are eleven good days for short novels. This month: Stoner by John Williams (a quiet life made enormous), So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell (the best novel about memory ever written in 144 pages), and The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (still, somehow, perfect).

January 19, 2026 · Bookselling

What ten years of selling books has taught me about people.

Mostly: people are kinder than the internet would have you believe. They want to be recommended things. They want to talk about what they've read. They will, given the slightest encouragement, tell you about their grandmother's library or the book they read on a flight in 1987 that they have never forgotten. The job, more than anything, is to listen.

December 22, 2025 · Gift Guide

The 2025 KitabShack gift list — twenty books, no algorithms.

Our annual list, compiled by all six staff over a single long evening with red wine and considerable disagreement. For the cook, the cyclist, the new parent, the recently retired, and the person who claims they don't read fiction. (They do. They just haven't found the right one yet.)

November 5, 2025 · Rare Books

How to tell a real first edition from a clever fake.

Our rare books specialist Caroline shares the four checks she runs on every potential acquisition. Useful if you've ever inherited a box of "old books" from a relative and wondered what's actually in there. (Usually nothing. Occasionally everything.)

October 12, 2025 · The Shop

Eleven years on Margaret Street: an anniversary letter.

A short note of thanks to the readers, regulars, and walk-in skeptics who have kept this shop alive. We didn't think we'd make it past year three. We didn't think we'd survive 2020. We are still, somehow, here. That is entirely your doing.