Book Club  is a new bookstore and wine bar in the infamous Alphabet City neighborhood of Lower Manhattan’s East Village. While I will grant that the East Village is not the bizzaro-crazy place of my feckless youth, its demise is exaggerated. The funky shops, bars, and hangouts of the gritty glory days are mostly gone, but cozy local bookstores like the Book Club take the sting out of the loss.

The bookshop stocks a general-interest inventory of some 3,000 titles, from children’s and YA to fiction, history and sci-fi and fantasy. There is also a locally focused section featuring books about New York and the East Village, as well as a variety of gifts and non-book items such as greeting cards, games and candles.

Like most denizens of the area, proprietors Erin Neary and Nat Esten  are relative newcomers to the Village, but they are committed to making the Book Club a community hub at 197 East 3rd Street.