If you’re a reader in New York, you know McNally Jackson. If you’re a serious reader, you might know Sarah McNally herself. It’s been 22 years since she founded McNally Jackson—now encapsulating a line of indie bookstores; a writing ephemera offshoot, Goods for the Study; and publishing arm, McNally Editions—which has come to embody a certain in-the-know, literary cool. If a scene can center around a store, then McNally Jackson has drawn a crowd.
Its bestseller and staff picks displays are about as big a boon as a dishy New York profile for an author. Its book clubs and poetry readings are legion. One writer even suggested to me that spotting a weathered copy of a McNally Editions title in a suitor’s bag or apartment would seal the deal on a second date.
McNally comes by the empire honestly. She’s the daughter of booksellers, the duo behind Canada’s McNally Robinson, and worked as an editor at Basic Books before opening the first McNally Jackson (which pulls “Jackson” from the surname of her son) on Prince Street. Despite reportedly reading books with the likes of David Byrne and Claire Danes, and selling the preferred tote of It girls like Kaia Gerber and Lily-Rose Depp, McNally has never lost sight of what makes her storefront a destination: taste, and more specifically, hers.
Here, she outlines the borders of her reading habits, the memoir she’ll never write, and the books she can’t forget.
As a second-generation bookseller, what did you grow up reading? When did your taste shift and crystallize?
My mother’s store in Winnipeg went deep and weird in small and university presses, so in addition to the obvious, I read a lot of philosophy and political theory. Growing up in an isolated part of a small country, I was desperate for dispatches from the world. I read globally in a way that would be unusual for an American teenager. When I moved to New York, I was surprised how little space bookstores made for international literature. Bringing the world of books to New York was one of the core inspirations behind McNally Jackson.
What has McNally Jackson taught you about what makes a bestseller?
This has changed so much over the years! When I started, bestselling novels were naturalistic. No more. One thing that has remained the same is that people love memoirs that feel raw and true. These memoirs are not necessarily lasting pieces of art, although they can be. The important thing is the openness of the memoirist, how close the reader can feel to the writer.
What’s a book someone should read if they want to get to know you?
I’d have to write my own memoir, but all I do is work, so no one would read it because of dullness, tedium, and repetition.
If you were writing a memoir, what would you title it?
My imagination faceplanted when I asked it this question. Writing a memoir is inconceivable to me. Inconceivable. Most of my loved ones are weirdly private. I’m weirdly private. Also, my life is without tragedy, and I’ve been so unbelievably lucky. People don’t read memoirs of lucky, happy, tragedyless people.
What’s the best book recommendation you’ve gotten off of a staff pick card?
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, one of our all-time bestselling staff picks.
Who do you most trust to deliver a book recommendation?
Michael Cunningham, as he is so attuned to the quality of sentences, but, to be honest, I trust no one. I think, as when setting up friends, you can account for interests but not for attraction. Compatibility between readers and writers contains the same element of mystery as compatibility between people.
Who do you feel deserves a biography that doesn’t have one yet?
Stephen Miller. How can a human being, born innocent, become so cruel?
What ingredients are essential for a successful book club?
If everyone in the book club feels comfortable speaking, and interested in and respectful of others, a book club can be the pinnacle of human civilization.
One book you turn to when you’re starved for inspiration?
When I’m creatively exhausted, I read Inspector Maigret mysteries. I have probably read 60 of them. Georges Simenon wrote more than 500 books. If he finished one in the morning, he started another before going to bed. He also married several times, slept with 10,000 women—his count—and managed to drink prodigiously throughout. He was a doer.
I have liked every book of his I have read, I’m never bored, even though they are basically formulaic. He reminds me that the drama of execution is overrated. Accumulated experience and trust in one’s abilities are more important if, like me, you were born a person of action.
One book you stopped reading in the middle and never finished?
The Magic Mountain. Twice! It is so embarrassing.
Sarah McNally’s Required Reading
Books I would take with me to solitary confinement:
Your Face Tomorrow trilogy by Javier Marias, 2002-2008
(McNally Jackson)
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman, 2006
(McNally Jackson)
2666 by Roberto Bolaño, 2009
(McNally Jackson)
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, 1927
(McNally Jackson)
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, 2011
(McNally Jackson)
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