Rare, historic books to take center stage at Booksy Galore’s vintage vault

By SHARON RUBINSTEIN 

Pound Ridge doesn’t have a rail station, but it does have another kind of crossroads — Booksy Galore. After more than a decade at her cozy spot located at 67 Westchester Ave., founder and owner Susan Williamson is giving her beloved bookstore a new chapter. On Dec. 6, she’ll debut “the vintage vault,” a refurbished room dedicated entirely to antiquarian and collectible volumes.

Vintage books have always been part of the Booksy mix, but the new vault marks Williamson’s full embrace of the rare and historic side of her business. Once a cramped storage room, the space is being reborn as a book lover’s sanctuary, with glass cases to house some of the rarer works and comfortable seating for browsing and conversation.

“The vintage vault is about preserving, both in an age of screens, social media soundbites and AI-generated replicas of art,” Williamson said. “Books, especially vintage books, are sacred objects to me.”

She speaks with reverence about finely made books that date to the late 1800s — volumes that need both a home and good care. Her most expensive work currently is a first edition of Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” offered for $5,500. It’s a handsome leather-bound volume, complete with fine black-and-white illustrations and the satisfying heft of history.

Booksy Galore's owner Susan Williamson with a copy of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," leather-bound and with black-and-white illustrations, is offered at $5,500.  Sharon Rubinstein Photos 

---

To Williamson, the tactile qualities of old books, the feel of the bindings, the marbled endpapers, the faint vanilla scent of paper aged over a century, make them treasures worth saving. “There’s a beauty in the craftsmanship that goes far beyond the words on the page,” she said.

Already a member of several bookselling organizations, Williamson is deepening her expertise in the field. She recently attended the Rare Book Collecting Festival and Fair in Washington, D.C., and is taking classes in bookbinding and repair at the Center for Book Arts in New York City. Her next goal is to join the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America, the professional standard-bearer for rare book dealers.

Regular customers are delighted by her new focus. One of them, Taylor Armstrong, who works for Macmillan Publishers, comes in weekly and often leaves with an armful of books.

“As a publisher and antiquarian collector myself, it’s one more way to put literacy into people’s hands,” she said. 

Armstrong praises Williamson’s curation across topics ranging from religion to politics to classics, and points out that few local bookstores offer the same range. 

“Booksy is offering something most other bookstores in the area, with their focus on bestsellers and children’s books, do not,” she added.

The shop sells new and used fiction and nonfiction for both children and adults and draws its enthusiastic customer base not only from Pound Ridge but also from neighboring towns and parts of Connecticut. 

“The market is there,” Williamson said, “and it’s full of discerning readers who are perhaps looking for something very different.”

Jennifer Coulter, director of the Pound Ridge Library, called Williamson “a talented and knowledgeable gem,” and Booksy Galore “a cornerstone of Pound Ridge.” 

“It’s more than just a shopping experience,” Coulter said. “It offers a sense of belonging.”

Williamson’s path to bookselling has been both deliberate and serendipitous. Educated in finance and economics as well as the arts, she began selling books online in 2009 while pursuing her doctorate. When her department moved offices, she rescued stacks of books — textbooks, fiction, and even a few first editions — that were being discarded by faculty. Selling them online satisfied her desire to save them from oblivion and share them with others.

“It all started because I couldn’t bear to see beautiful books thrown away,” she said.

Her business background, she believes, has been crucial to sustaining Booksy. “I knew my expenses before I opened the door,” she said. “I told myself, ‘If no one walks into the store, can I make it as an online seller?’” She gave herself one year to become profitable, and met that goal. She has since exceeded her three-, five-, seven-, and 10-year projections.

The store’s name was born from a moment of whimsy. While watching the James Bond film, “Goldfinger,” Williamson was struck by the name of one of its main characters, Pussy Galore, and decided to borrow and tweak it. The playful title stuck.

Luck, timing, and a love of literature have all shaped the story of Booksy Galore. “It’s about surrounding myself with people who love and appreciate literature, art, philosophy and the humanities,” Williamson said.

The next chapter will include not just rare books but also community events tied to them. Williamson plans to host bookbinding and papermaking workshops and perhaps start a nonfiction book club in the months ahead.