On Christmas Eve every year, the brightest light on the Upper East Side, hand in hand with the Christmas Pageant at the Church of the Heavenly Rest nearby, is from the Corner Bookstore, the townhouse at the corner of Madison and 93rd St, where owners Nancy and Ray have their annual Open House champagne and cake party at 6 till 9pm.

The Corner Bookstore is the quietly renowned haven of cultivated readers on the Upper East Side, the priceless refuge of the rich, famous and well educated inhabitants of Carnegie Hill, who may wish to hear authors of the moment read or expound upon their just published masterpieces, then buy them and read them.

The experience of passing by the window, going in to browse, conferring with the young, beautiful and handsome staff about your choice, paying the proper retail price for the book instead of resorting down market to the cavernous Barnes and Noble on 86th Street, or even more traitorous to the eternal values of true personal bookstore shopping, to Amazon on line, and then having the book in hand as one returns home a block or two nearby is unmatchable in the era of the virtual bookstore, where machines cater to those who do not understand that bookstores, like books, have a personal relationship with enlightened customers.

This great tradition of individual real life attention enhances their curiosity and appreciation of literary fields beyond the familiar and the best seller list, and blesses the books they buy with a kind of clubby endorsement and well informed recommendation along the lines of, metaphorically speaking, the letter of introduction that the young Mozart carried with his father from the Archbishop of Salzburg to the Duke of Milan.