THIS FROM LA TIMES BLOGGER JACKET COPY

If anyone has any doubt that genre fiction has crossed over — not just into the mainstream but also into more alternative corners of the culture — New York’s St. Marks Bookshop offers indisputable proof. I made a quick visit there this morning, and a good half of the featured new and noteworthy titles were mystery and science fiction: Walter Mosley’s “Blonde Faith,” the anthologies “Manhattan Noir 2” and “Steampunk” — all on the shelves where volumes of Lacan and Derrida used to preside.
Don’t get me wrong: St. Mark’s hasn’t dumbed it down, just widened the lens.

But it’s not just the books at St. Mark’s that offer solace to a reader in a society that increasingly views itself as post-literate. It’s also the place itself, which at 11:30 a.m. on a Friday was (dare I say it) crowded, aisles clogged with people browsing, all of us marked by the glorious aimlessness of the reader, the notion that in here, at least, we might keep the world a little bit at bay.
This, it seems to me, is the real draw of books — not escapism but real (if temporary) escape. If the scene at St. Mark’s this morning is any indication, I’m not the only one who needs that in the midst of these confusing days.

Read the full piece and check out Jacket Copy at the same time.

And my thanks to Mary Varnham of Awa Press for bringing this item to my notice.