First Cut Books

First Cut Books is an online independent bookstore based in Hollywood. “We hope you are able to support your brick-and-mortar independent bookstore near you,” advocates head honcho Lucia Silva, “but we are happy to be your web-alternative.” Silva also does the lion’s share of the book reviews on the site. The “store” is sectioned into Poetry, Art & Photography, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Kids and Periodicals (only one title in this last section, though: Filthy, an “irreverent, merciless and not very timely” quarterly about baseball pitching), with a compelling review for each title offered. Of Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti’s Selected Poems, in which Silva read and reread one particular poem, “You Were Broken,” she writes, “That skinny little book still splays open to that page, its tiny spine broken over the love of just one poem.” Anais Nin’s Delta of Venus is deemed by Silva to be “Part of the Library of Necessary Books, because of its usefulness and rarity of form. And because it will soon be among the most worn and ragged books on your shelf.”