Book Bench

This is the book bench. It resides at the center of the editorial offices of the New Yorker magazine.

“On any given day, it overflows with hardcovers and galleys, kindly shipped to us by publishers, plus older tomes that people have cleared out of their toppling shelves…When an e-mail is sent out announcing the arrival of new stacks, it is not unlike a drop of blood entering shark-infested waters. Newcomers to the magazine, shocked by the frenzy, are gently reassured by an editor: “But it’s for books.

It is also the namesake of a new blog from the New Yorker, The Book Bench : Loose Leafs from the New Yorker Books Department

Photo by Samuel Ritt

Thanks to Books, Inq. for the lead