I have recently joined a book club, which is something I have always wanted to do. I read all the time anyway, and I'm constantly looking for something great to add to my reading list. At our first club meeting back in May we made a list of books that will take us all the way through January or February 2010 at least, and I'm already almost done with the third book on the list, with a nice big stack on my bedside table just waiting for me.

Along with my love of books and reading, I have a fascination with bookstores. It's almost a fatal attraction. I can spend hours in a book shop just looking and never buying a thing. Barnes & Noble could easily become a second home, even without the café. When I lived in New York, which is to say most of my life before 1988 when I moved to Florida, I could (and often did) spend an entire day just going from one bookstore to the next, with no thought of food, water, or any job I might be expected to show up at.

I would always start my bookstore pilgrimage at the old Rizzoli store on Fifth Avenue. Rizzoli's was like a cathedral – huge windows overlooking the Avenue, beautiful wood shelving, deep carpeting, and gorgeous books everywhere. The main floor contained the "art" books, those oversize volumes containing hundreds of glossy photographs and minimal text. Reproductions of Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural drawings, Impressionist paintings, antique maps, anything that could be represented visually in the pages of a book, were arrayed like pastries in a French bakery. But as enticing as these books were, I hardly ever made an actual purchase at Rizzoli's. Like French pastry, these books were a little too rich for daily consumption. And so my biggest thrill at Christmas was seeing that large package under the tree wrapped in the distinctive Rizzoli gift paper – thanks to my dad's traditional last-minute Christmas Eve shopping panic, he never had time to visit more than a few stores, and since I was the reader in the family I usually got lucky.

At the opposite end of the bookstore spectrum, and the opposite end of town, was (and is) the Strand, on lower Broadway. This is where used books are put out to pasture, and where they are transformed through some mysterious alchemical process into treasures worthy of the Alhambra, or a dragon's lair. Even the bins of used paperbacks on the sidewalk outside the store windows have an aura (made up mostly of dust and mold, I am sure). For someone who was taught from an early age to respect and revere the written word and the volumes that contain those words (I still can't bring myself to underline or highlight in a hardcover), the Strand was overwhelming. One has the impression that they must have at least one copy of every book ever printed, somewhere in the stacks. Of course trying to find any particular volume in that overwhelming (and, I admit it, somewhat claustrophobic) setting can be a challenge. But – if you want it, they've got it. And they'll find it for you, you don't have to get dusty.

And there was a little bookstore around the corner from my San Francisco apartment, back in the '80s. It was called Green Apple Books. This shop dealt in used (previously read?) paperback fiction, and had an active book-exchange program, so that you could buy a stack of novels, read them all, and then turn them in for another stack a week later. It was a tiny shop but crammed full, and I spent hours poking around and finding all kinds of stuff.

Of course there have been other bookshops in my life, including such famous ones as City Lights, in San Francisco, and the Little Shop Around the Corner in that movie, you know the one. But Rizzoli's, the Strand and the Green Apple are the ones that shaped my bookstore aesthetic.

Time marches on. Rizzoli's hasn't changed much, though they have moved around the corner to 57th Street just off Fifth. You can visit their Web site to get a taste of the Rizzoli experience. The Strand is still down there on Broadway, still stacked to the ceiling with "18 miles of books," used and new. They have a Web site, too (check it out, there are a few surprises lurking on their About Strand page). And the Green Apple? Yes, it's still there, and apparently it's famous too, so if anyone is out in San Francisco, please go by and take a look, it's on Clement Street, just off a different Fifth Avenue, across from the Toy Boat ice cream shop. But that's another story.