HAPPY NATIONAL BOOK ORGY!
Today is Independent Bookstore Day!
Listen up, fellow nerds: Today is my favorite religious holiday. It is Independent Bookstore Day, which means shopping, but you can feel good about it! You’re supporting a locally owned establishment! You’re a job creator! You can buy books in so many languages, including Braille! You can even buy AUDIOBOOKS through some of your favorite indie bookshops! AAAAAAAAH FUCK ME UP INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE DAY I LOVE YOOOOOOU!
I put out the call online for favorite independent bookshops, and people had so many suggestions! I tried to mention as many as possible, but this is not comprehensive. Also, I haven’t visited all of these joints personally, so cannot attest to their excellence or lack thereof. I am well aware alla youse will have suggestions in the comments, too.
Please note in particular in your suggestions whether the bookstore has an excellent bookstore PET. This will make me go to a place.
One more thing — if you can’t get to a bookshop in person or simply do not prefer crowds, placing an online order or phone call order is almost always easy. They’ll usually special-order something they don’t have in stock.
California
Berkeley — Sleepy Cat Books
Los Angeles (Inglewood) — The Salt Eaters Bookshop
Los Angeles (Los Feliz) — Skylight Books (my favorite bookstore in Los Angeles)
Los Angeles (West Adams) — Reparations Club
Los Angeles (West Hollywood) — Book Soup (where Rebecca had her book reading, and where she says at least one of you faithful terrible ones works!)
Florida
Miami Beach — Books and Books
Sarasota — Bookstore1
Georgia
Athens — Avid Bookshop
Atlanta — Bookish
Ellijay — Hemlock Bazaar
Illinois
Chicago — Check out 2024 Chicagoland Bookstore Crawl
Chicago (Andersonville) — Women & Children First
Chicago (Lincoln Square) — The Book Cellar
Chicago (Logan Square) — City Lit Books
Chicago (Pilsen) — Pilsen Community Books
Chicago (Rogers Park) — The Armadillo’s Pillow
Highland Park — Secret World Books
Indiana
Indianapolis — Ujamaa Community Bookstore
Massachusetts
Boston (Coolidge Corner) — Brookline Booksmith
“Near Boston” (Harvard Square) — Grolier Poetry Bookshop
Salem — Wicked Good Books
Minnesota
Minneapolis — Moon Palace Books
Red Wing — Fair Trade Books
Saint Paul — Black Garnet Books
Montana
Bozeman — Country Bookshelf
Missoula — Shakespeare & Co.
New Mexico
Las Cruces — COAS Books
New York
Brooklyn (Fort Greene) — Greenlight Bookstore
Brooklyn (Greenpoint) — Word
Kingston — Rough Draft Bar & Books
Manhattan — Rizzoli Bookstore
Woodstock — The Golden Notebook
New Jersey
Collingswood — Ida’s Bookshop
Jersey City — Word
Princeton — Labyrinth Books
North Carolina
Asheville — Malaprops (my favorite bookstore in the whole wide world)
Chapel Hill — Flyleaf Books
Ohio
Cleveland Heights — Mac’s Backs
Oregon
Portland — Powell’s Books
Pennsylvania
New Hope — Farley’s Bookshop
Philadelphia — Harriett’s Bookshop
Texas
Austin — Book People
Houston — Check out 2024 Houston Independent Bookstore Crawl
Again, I know I didn’t catch ‘em all. Therefore, please share ur thoughts in the comments. Thanks and have a great weekend!
I started losing my entire mind in a fun way (not that there's much to lose, eh?) when writing this. I had to make myself stop listing all the things, because the whole point is I knew the Wonkette commentariat would participate with their own good suggestions. Anyway, this was really fun to write and I cared about it perhaps an unnatural amount! Thank you to everybody who made suggestions to me on Instagram, BlueSky, Substack, and Patreon. I wish I could've transcribed them all but my wrists said YOU ASSHOLE and I said OKAY, OKAY.
Look, I'm up for just about any orgy, but when it involves books, you really can't pull me away.
As for excellent bookstores, Left Bank Books in Seattle is excellent. As is Village Books in Bellingham (though they have since merged with the space formerly next door and now have a bunch of stationery stuff as well, which I find distracting and too busy & kitchy, but other people might like it).
Let's not forget independent comic book shops, which not only sell reading material (devalue it as you like b/c of the pictures and the frequent superheroes, but there's some good literature in there) in the form of graphic novels, but have more and more often branched out into selling fantasy & sci-fi novels of a more traditional, non-illustrated type. My first encounters with Vonda McIntyre and Jessica Amanda Salmonson were through a comic book shop in Beaverton, Oregon and I'm still deeply indebted to them.
My favourite comic book store in Portland, Or is Rose City Comics, though Excalibur Comics on Hawthorne is a close second and has some very good memories and people associated with it. (Among other things, when I was desperately short on cash and about to be homeless, I regretfully sold my comic collection to Excalibur. When the offer was short of what I needed to pay rent, they upped their offer by a little over 20% so that what I took home was enough to satisfy the landlord. I literally avoided eviction because of them, and I shall be eternally grateful.)