Our Readers Also Love a Good Bookstore

September 19, 2008 in bookstore by Claire | 1 comment

Despite Kim’s best efforts, she can’t actually make it to every independent bookstore in the world, let alone this country, and of course I barely ever make it east of the 405.  So we’re incredibly grateful to our readers who have taken the time to write us about some of their favorite bookstores–it lets us expand the scope of this blog.

If you have a bookstore you love, please feel free to contact us at kim@bookstorepeople.com or claire@bookstorepeople.com and plug it.  You can also simply add a comment at the end of this blog and tell us about it that way, but then you’re depriving us of an easy future post and you don’t want to do that, do you?

Anyway, here are some excerpts from e-mails we’ve gotten from fellow readers who’ve been inspired to share their own bookstore love with us.  Hope they inspire you, in turn.

From Roni Blak, owner of MNR Dance Factory in Brentwood:
When I was in San Francisco last spring, I was doing one of my fave things in SF which is to comb bookstore after bookstore.   In speaking to one of the owners (of Browser Books at 2225 Fillmore Street), letting him know about the demise of Duttons, he informed me that ‘in this town us independent guys shut down giants’  I asked what he meant by that and he said that a local Borders was forced to close its doors because the locals wouldn’t patronize their establishment.
Chalk one up for the little guys.
From Kathy Baker:
We love our Vroman’s here in Pasadena.  I worry about any independent bookstore these days, but Vroman’s seems to be going strong.  I used to love a bookstore in Albuquerque, down in the North Valley, but I don’t remember the name.  I’m going to look it up.  And we go to Bishop on the way to Mammoth every year, too, but have never stopped in that bookstore!  We’ll have to check it out after we buy the obligatory and tasty Sheepherder’s bread at Schott’s.
I’ve discovered that Albuquerque has lots of independent bookstores.  My older sister lives there.  I forwarded her your blog and asked her about the bookstore I remembered. She wrote me that Bookworks has a good place to have breakfast outside and dogs are very welcome with water bowls and doggie snacks provided. She met the author Elizabeth Berg there at a book-signing, and as I didn’t know her books, I went to the South Pasadenda Library today and took out one of her many books.  So see what your blog has done?  An email to my sister, a new bookstore to try, WITH my dog, and a new author to read!
And from Nancy Neufeld Callaway:
One bookshop that made a huge impression on me was Atticus which I discovered while in college.  It was a tiny, charming, really inviting shop on Chapel Street in New Haven, and I think it was one of the first places to have coffees and great food.  Moist and delicious chocolate chip scones served with individual coffee pots (which at that time, was a first for me! — very Euro!).  It made me want to be a bookshop owner… reading books all day… baking… chatting with new faces…. drinking coffee.  When I couldn’t take it anymore in the library, that’s the place I’d go.  That or “Claires” which had the best desserts in the world, and my closest friend worked there so I got freebies.  I don’t even like carrot cake, but at that place, I’d eat the whole entire cake.
And, finally, a quote from Kim’s friend Mark Koussa who saw this and thought of us:
“A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.”   – Jerry Seinfeld

Browser Books
2225 Fillmore Street
San Francisco, CA 94115

Vroman’s
695 East Colorado Blvd
Pasadena, CA 91101
Tel: 626 449-5320
Fax: 626 792-7308

Bookworks
4022 Rio Grande NW
Albuquerque, NM  87107
Tel: 505 344-8139
Fax: 505 344-9948

Atticus Bookstore and Cafe
1082 Chapel Street
New Haven, CT  06510
Tel: 203 776 4040

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  1. morebookslesstv’s avatar

    morebookslesstv on October 3, 2008 at 3:27 pm

    Paris…

    Last summer (2007, which economically seemed light years away), my family and I vacationed in Paris. The City of Light (which my French friend insists that, plural…Lights, is incorrect), was everything that I had read about, imagined and yes…saw on TV (ha!) In fact is was better.

    As much as I subscribe to the notion that “the book is always better than the movie”, not even the best travel guides could capture the experience of real French bread, fine cheese and the buzz of the City. The museums and other sites were great, but it was the sum of the small surprises that really made the experience.

    One of my favorite surprises…along the Seine, there are rows of antique book dealers. They keep their inventory locked up in steel containers overnight, and apparently the threat of theft is minimal. (I guess that even in France, car stereos are a sweeter target for thieves than books.)

    There did not seem to be any rhyme or reason to their business hours, but when they were open, the owners were living life as you can imagine the French doing. None of them had throngs of custombers sipping on Cafe Lautes. I saw vendors reading, smoking, eating, napping and even painting. I doubt if any were getting rich, but they seemed content.

    So the next time any of you are in Paris, check it out!

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