Craig Mod is currently on a book tour for his new walking memoir, Things Become Other Things. While in NYC, he stopped by one of his favorite bookstores in the world, Three Lives & Company, located on the corner of W 10th and Waverly Place in the West Village, to sign some copies of his book. He wrote about Three Lives and what it means to see his book in the window of the shop:
I know of no other store (book or otherwise) with nicer, more knowledgable people working there. It’s uncanny, the amount of unharried, chill, giving-a-shitness you feel as soon as you walk in. The space is small, sure, but every millimeter is covered in arguably one of the best curated selections of books in the world. I dare you to visit and not buy something (I bought Eliza Barry Callahan’s The Hearing Test today). The taste is unparalleled. I’ve been to enough bookstores in the world now to say this with some confidence. No, they don’t have every book. But we don’t want every book. We want great books chosen by people whose adoration of books stems from a life committed to books.
Like Craig, I’ve been visiting Three Lives for probably 20 years, first as my neighborhood bookstore and now as one of the NYC touchstones I visit every time I’m in town (even when they moved several blocks west a few years ago during the renovation of their building). It’s my favorite bookstore and the place against which I mentally compare every other bookstore I’ve ever been to — my personal mètre étalon for booksellers.
If I ever write a book, the only place I really care about seeing it is in the window or on the front table at Three Lives. When I visit, I always daydream a little about that, my book in that window. Like Craig said: “It’s not about seeing it in every window, just the windows of places I respect the most.”
Fun day today: two of my online pals have books coming out. First is Craig Mod’s Things Become Other Things, a memoir of a walk (and a life) in Japan and on a childhood friend who didn’t have the same opportunity.
Photographer and essayist Craig Mod is a veteran of long solo walks. But in 2021, during the pandemic shutdown of Japan’s borders, one particular walk around the Kumano Kodō routes — the ancient pilgrimage paths of Japan’s southern Kii Peninsula — took on an unexpectedly personal new significance. Mod found himself reflecting on his own childhood in a post-industrial American town, his experiences as an adoptee, his unlikely relocation to Japan at nineteen, and his relationship with one lost friend, whose life was tragically cut short after their paths diverged. For Mod, the walk became a tool to bear witness to a quiet grace visible only when “you’re bored out of your skull and the miles left are long.”
Also out today is Casey Johnston’s A Physical Education, the subtitle of which is How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting.
In A Physical Education, Casey Johnston recounts how she ventured into the brave new world of weightlifting, leaving behind years of restrictive eating and endless cardio. Woven through the trajectory of how she rebuilt her strength and confidence is a staggering exposé of the damaging doctrine spread by diet and fitness culture.
Both Casey and Craig are wonderful writers who care deeply about their craft and passing their experiences, insights, and enthusiasm along to their readers. I’m picking up my pre-ordered copy of Craig’s book from my local bookstore this afternoon and I’m hoping there’s a copy of Casey’s book on the new nonfiction table so I can grab that too.
A Physical Education is available at Amazon, Bookshop, and at other booksellers. Casey is on tour for the book right now; check out the tour dates here.
Things Become Other Things is also available at Amazon, Bookshop, and other booksellers. Craig is currently on tour too; you can find his tour dates here.
My pal Craig Mod has a book coming out in May 2025 called Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir. Here’s part of the synopsis:
Photographer and essayist Craig Mod is a veteran of long solo walks. But in 2021, during the pandemic shutdown of Japan’s borders, one particular walk around the Kumano Kodo routes — the ancient pilgrimage paths of Japan’s southern Kii Peninsula — took on an unexpectedly personal new significance. While passing the peninsula’s shrinking villages, Mod found himself reflecting on his own childhood in a post-industrial American town, his experiences as an adoptee, his unlikely relocation to Japan as a student at age nineteen, and his relationship with one lost friend, whose life was tragically cut short after their paths diverged. As the days passed, he considered why he has walked so rigorously and religiously during his twenty-five years as an immigrant in Japan, contemplating the power of walking itself. For Mod, solo walks are a tool to change the very structure of his mind, to better himself, and to bear witness to a quiet grace visible only when “you’re bored out of your skull and the miles left are long.”
The way Craig has gone about writing and publishing this book is unique. In November 2023, he published an exquisitely designed fine art edition with color photography, limited to 2500 copies (of which ~900 remain), and priced at $100. The mass market version, published by Random House, is an expanded version of the fine art edition retailing for $31 ($15 on Kindle). Craig explains:
Wait? Didn’t you already publish this book in November 2023? Yes! Yes we did! (Where we = me, Craig.) That was the fine art edition. Limited in quantity. Printed and bound in Japan, in full color on Heidelberg presses with a silk screened and foil stamped cover. Retailing for $100. This Random House edition is a significant expansion of that fine art edition — more than double the length in text with a dozen additional photographs. There is so much more context about me and my relationship to Japan, and more Japanese historical context as well. The Random House edition is printed and bound as a standard trade hardcover (and retails for $31 USD), with images printed in black and white. I’m tempted — almost! — to call them different books that emerged from the same source material.
It’ll be fascinating to see how this plays out.
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