Cove Books

Books &
the hours of
reading them.

An independent bookshop on Girard — new, used, antiquarian, and whatever else keeps turning up.

this week on the front table

Eight books we've each pressed into a customer's hands.

01Fiction

Piranesi

Susanna Clarke

Short, strange, entirely its own thing. You read it in two afternoons and spend the week wondering about a kind of loneliness you didn't know was missing.

— signed, the front desk

02Poetry

Devotions

Mary Oliver

“Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

— a standing recommendation

03Natural history

The Peregrine

J. A. Baker

A year of watching a single falcon, in prose that feels like glass. Written so hard it becomes weather.

— for people who love winter

04Essays

Upstream

Mary Oliver

Companion to the one above. Shorter essays, a walking pace, the same fierce noticing.

— shelved beside the window

05Philosophy

Four Thousand Weeks

Oliver Burkeman

“The average human lifespan is absurdly, outrageously, insultingly brief.”

— the one we keep re-ordering

06Food

An Everlasting Meal

Tamar Adler

Not so much a cookbook as a way of being in a kitchen. Read it for the sentences even if you never cook from it.

— food / essays

07Reissue

Stoner

John Williams

Quiet. Devastating. A novel about a small life that becomes the shape of most lives.

— always on the table

08Antiquarian

Letters to a Young Poet

Rainer Maria Rilke

A 1934 hardback we keep circulating back in. If you're at a turning, take this one home.

— ask at the desk

readings, trades, reading groups

Upcoming in the reading room.

Apr 24 · 7pmFriday

A reading from The Peregrine

With a short introduction on British nature writing of the 1960s.

RSVP →
May 1 · 6pmFriday

Used-book trade day

Bring a small stack. Store credit, same-day. Limit twenty per visit.

DETAILS
May 8 · 7:30pmFriday

Poetry night — in translation

Short readings in the original language followed by English. Open signups at the desk.

SIGN UP
May 15 · 10amSaturday

Saturday reading group — Stoner

Second of four sessions. New members welcome; we'll catch you up with a two-page note.

RSVP →
May 22 · 7pmFriday

First Editions night

A slow look through the antiquarian case. We'll hand things around; bring clean hands.

RSVP →

the shop

Come in.

on
Girard Avenue, between Wall & Silverado
open
Tue–Sat, 11–7
Sunday, 11–5
Closed Monday
trades
Weekdays, 11–4. We'll look, same day.
reading room
Open during shop hours. First come. Coffee from the place next door is fine.
gift wrap
Always. Takes a minute. We won't charge for it.

We are small and we are slow on purpose. Browsing is the point. Ask us anything — if we don't have it we will almost certainly find it.

Come sit by the window. The cove is a two-minute walk.