Independent Book Store Day

Yesterday was Independent Book Store Day and I had the day off so I intended to make the most of it. My first stop was Vintage where I have my regular book club, and we got there just as they were opening so I could make sure I got a copy of the exclusive book club journal made just for Independent Book Store Day. It was the one thing I was determined to get and they had it ready for me. It is awesome. It has reading lists from John Waters, David Sedaris, Stephen King, and a bunch of others including other booksellers. It also has pages literally devoted to recording the events of each book club, which I feel dumb for never having thought to do before now despite having run this book club for four years now. I also found an interesting book on Grail legend so I was also excited about that. Vintage was having a drawing, so we entered that, then we headed off to Broadway Books.

Broadway was also celebrating their 26th anniversary, so they had balloons and cupcakes and all kinds of things going on. They also have a much busier location so it was a little crowded. We didn’t get anything there and didn’t stay long, but I got some pictures for my social media. I’ve been promoting local bookstores on social media to encourage more people to shop at actual book stores instead of getting their books on amazon, that way book stores can continue to be a thing. So many people seem mystified by this concept and it makes me angry.

For lunch we met up with my friend Sean. He had wanted to buy one of my voodoo dolls and wanted to get Korean bbq, which I had still not tried. It was quite a process, with lots of meat and you cook it yourself and there’s lots of little sides and we all cooked meat and ate and had a good time. Sean is also trying to organize a DnD group for us. I hope he manages to get this all on board, as we would like to play at this local game store that has space for people to play games like DnD, and it would be nice to get out and be social on a regular basis.

We then drove out to the outskirts of Portland to Annie Bloom’s Bookstore to meet up with my friend and coworker Melissa. Annie Bloom’s is kind of more of a yuppie boutique book store in a fancy main street type shop. They were also doing back to back author readings the whole time we were there so we had to be really quite and it was hard to navigate the store because people would just stand wherever they were to listen to the speaker. The store had a lot of nice stuff, though, and Reed found a book he was excited about.

Our last stop was my favorite other than Vintage, and it was Wallace Books in Sellwood. It’s a big old wooden house stuffed floor to ceiling and in multiple rooms with used books. I loved exploring this labyrinth of books and took lots of pictures and definitely plan on going back when I’m not experiencing a complete and total financial crises. Also, my book situation is just completely out of control.

We then joined Melissa at her house to play a game of Pandemic, a cooperative board game where we all work to save the world from disease outbreaks. It was very fun but my energy was flagging and I was glad it was cooperative and Melissa was doing all the strategy.

Anyway, there was a whole lot of financial nonsense that came up today while I was trying to have a good time and celebrate books, so that was depressing but I’ll get to that in a later entry. We ended up having a pretty good day regardless, visiting four book stores, celebrating Independent Book Store Day, and navigating two different social situations successfully. BUY YOUR BOOKS AT BOOK STORES, PEOPLE!