Book Culture LIC Staff Profile: Juan Patrick!

Get to know Juan Patrick, a bookselling classicist at the new Book Culture Long Island City!


Juan Patrick Soto - Bookseller

Bio: I'm pretty new at bookselling but I was born and raised in New York. I grew up in Brooklyn, where I still live, and recently graduated from Brown. I like selling books, but reading them is even better. I also cook, write, and enjoy learning languages (I studied Latin and Greek in college and I'm working on Italian). I hold strong opinions about whether to shelve biographies under author or subject.

1) What is your role as a bookseller for Book Culture? 

I do a bit of everything. Mostly, I work with customers, helping them find books, giving recommendations, and ringing them up. I also shelve, sort, and read a lot of books. And I try not to let alphabetizing drive me too crazy.

2) How did you come to join the Book Culture family? 

After graduating last spring, I moved home to New York from Providence and started looking for work and for ways to stay surrounded by books. When I saw that Book Culture was hiring, I knew I wanted to work there.

3) What are your areas of expertise?

I'm still fairly new at bookselling so I can't claim any particular expertise. I studied classics in college, and literature and literary criticism more generally, so I've got a good grounding in those subjects. Beyond that, I read a lot of novels, new and old, as well as travelogues, cookbooks and food writing, and poetry (mostly ancient).

4) What are you currently reading?

I'm reading two novels right now: Ali Smith's touching, hilarious, and brilliant How to Be Both and Jane Gardam's The Flight of the Maidens (also touching, hilarious, brilliant). I'm also reading Jhumpa Lahiri's In Other Words (In Altre Parole) and Patrick Leigh Fermor's Between the Woods and the Water. Next, I'm looking forward to Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust.

5) What are you looking forward to most at Book Culture LIC?

I'm very excited about our skylights.

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