Any book seems to have its appropriate, though inevitably temporary, resting place. Here we see a copy of E.C. Large’s Asleep in the afternoon in the Mast second-hand bookshop in Manhattan’s East Village. This location bears out the prediction of a sales manager that E.C. Large would be taken up by ‘hip young people’ – and hip enough to know the virtues of alphabetical order. The democratic, plain-writing Large is sandwiched by Ring Lardner and Stieg Larsson: neighbours who seem somehow exactly right for him.

This is the second in a possible set of posts on what happens to our books post-purchase. For the first, see here. (Thanks to Roland Früh for this photograph.)