About Edith Grossman.

On top of a bookcase in the hallway outside her bedroom is a towering stack of books. “Those I’m waiting to read, though not in any order of preference. But after I’ve read a very long one, all I want is a short one.” Grossman is a reader’s reader, happy to have gotten cheap paperbacks from neighborhood stores like the old Shakespeare & Co., Labyrinth Books (now Bookculture), and Papyrus (now Morningside Bookshop). It’s about the content, not covers or first editions. “I like to buy books on the street, too, but I’m wary of it now because of bed bugs.” Her collection has also been fed by the places she traveled to in her youth. She grins large: “My clothes used to fit in an overnight bag. But my books took up trunks and trunks.”