Community Bookstore: Park Slope, Brooklyn

Community Bookstore (and its sister shop, Terrace Books, in Windsor Terrace) is the sort of bookshop that mirrors the reader I aspire to be: thoughtful, idiosyncratic, ambitious, and unpretentious, with strong opinions and streaks of whimsy. And there is a secret tiny garden out back with a turtle pond. (Fittingly, my dear friend Stephanie, who is the mind and spirit behind the shop, is the person who introduced me to Russell Hoban's TURTLE DIARY, one of my favorite books.)