We stopped for lunch at Morro Bay last week and as we meandered up and down the boardwalk, it occurred to me that there may be a bookstore in the area. Usually I search for bookstores before I leave, but this was an unscheduled stop and I was bookstore clueless. Luckily, I remembered Leslie had the Indiebound App on her iPhone. It’s so easy to use, her 11 year old daughter looked up Morro Bay and found Coalesce Books, just a short drive away. (Side plea: Is there a petition I could sign or someone I could beg for the iPhone to offer Verizon as a carrier? How much did AT&T pay for that exclusive contract? When does it end? The Blackberry is no iPhone.) I was so impressed with the App, it showed all of the bookstores within 50 miles!
We all piled into Leslie’s mini-van and stormed Coalesce Books. This store is vintage coastal California. The entire aura was a warm golden brown, there were books everywhere, the strong aroma of incense, colorful signs wherever my eye wandered, and a community bulletin board that advertised all types of events including the evening on sustainable living that the store hosted the night before. Coalesce Books is a combination new and used bookstore. The new books are on shelves in the front, but the strength is in the wide selection of used books. It is one of the best organized used bookstores I’ve come across in a long time. Often I enjoy wandering around a bookstore looking to see what I may stumble upon, but this time we were a party of six, too large for long term browsing. At Coalesce, there was a sub-division for almost every genre making meandering easy, even a ”pirate” literature shelf, which I guess is 1990s for “vampire” literature. I asked one of the employees if the store kept any Twilight books in stock, she laughed, they can hardly get them in let alone keep them. I know my daughter isn’t willing to part with her well worn set any time soon. Read the rest of this entry »






