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Independent Bookstore Day 2025
Independent Bookstore Day is something near and dear to my heart and Kelly’s. We love a good bookstore, but the independent booksellers are in a class by themselves.
💡 Civilize 📚
Bookstores are lonely forts, spilling light onto the sidewalk. They civilize their neighborhoods. ~John Updike
Bookstores are nerd mazes. You follow walls of temptation to the cash register and give them the cheese.
We absolutely cannot get enough of a good bookstore.
We’re a little too far away from our favorite independent bookstores to do serious damage to our financial wellbeing.
Fortunately, when we’re out running around on errands, there are usually some nice bookstores for us to drop in on.
The funny thing about independent bookstores is that you don’t know what you’re going to get.
We knew what Waldenbooks and B. Dalton looked like at the mall.
We know what the book palaces known as Borders and B&N will generally look like whether we’re in state, out of state, in the city or out in the boonies.
An independent bookstore?
Could be dark. Could be bright.
Could be organized. Could be a hoarder’s image of a collection of books.
Some approaches are more successful than others.
Some come and go. Some last a century or more like…
📚 Oldie But A Goodie 🗽
Inside NYC’s oldest independent bookstore
The Argosy bookstore is a century old this year. Now that I know it exists, I have a driving urge to get there.
Actually, there are a lot of sights I want to see in the Big Apple. There’s a famous comic book store in Times Square (or at least there used to be?).
I’d also like to visit some of the places I have designated as story locations in my Sentinels series.
Not now, though. Some things need to change in my own circumstances and in the governance of the city that never sleeps.
It can be a fool’s errand to put things off to the future, but it’s equally foolish to barge in where you’re not prepared to go.
Some day has its own golden currency. It gives you something to look forward to and hope is worth it’s weight in diamonds when you only have a little.
🍷 Wine Lists? 📜
I didn’t know how many independent bookstores had amazing wine lists until I toured with ‘Another Brooklyn.’ ~Jacqueline Woodson
Do gimmicks work for independent bookstores?
It’s hard to say. I think you’d be foolish to dismiss any attempt to keep one’s store afloat.
For me, a wine list wouldn’t be much of a draw.
For others? Could be even more of a draw than the books themselves.
Ew.
Okay, that left a bad taste in my mouth.
The whole purpose of going to a bookstore is the books.
Whatever gimmicks help to keep the lights on are up to the store owners.
They have to find what works for them and their customers.
Eventually, it would be cool if what works for them and their customers is an entire shelf of my work.
That’s all for today. See you back on Wednesday for some comfort food.