My literary heart is, and has always been, torn between two worlds. On the one hand is the sensory delight of the dark, dusty library that started with an almost sacred room in my parents' house and has brought me to and kept me in the myriad libraries of Oxford, where I've spent four decades losing myself in physical text. But there is also nothing quite like the electricity of a live show. Which is why I spent more than a decade running spoken word shows, and why anything that brings the book to a live audience will grab my attention.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
Add in that I have always seen New York as the home of live literary art and this story had me hooked. Audible has opened what its press release calls the “first ever bookless bookstore” in New York's Bowery. The Story House will be open from Wednesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. through the whole of May, so there's still time to go and try it out.
What to Expect
The venue, open for free to the public, will have lots of things you might usually associate with live events, such as panel talks, crafting sessions, and chances to meet creators, including narrators (you can check out the full program of events here). But audiobooks are at its heart, and audiobooks are what's most interesting about the pop-up shop.
It sounds really cutting edge in its presentation and description (glass-like “story tiles” feel like something from 2001) but in practice, it's a modern riff on good old-fashioned record stores, where you find something that looks interesting (story tiles have covers and descriptions of Audible audiobooks) and take it to a booth to listen. Then if you like what you hear, you can buy it.
There are also “story tenders” in house to whom you can turn for advice on what to try listening to next (which have me thinking less Tom Cruise in Cocktail, more the bartender in The Shining—I'm clearly getting Kubrick vibes here).
A Fascinating Concept
It's a fascinating concept. And given the long history of record stores as places for events, sampling, and purchases (the first gig I ran was in London's legendary Rough Trade Records: as a venue, these places have at best an alchemy to them), it's not as out there as perhaps Audible would like people to think. It's a shame it doesn't have more than a month to prove the concept (for now).
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