SEATTLE INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE DAY ADVENTURES: THE SEQUEL
by Catherine Bull
Seattle Independent Bookstore Day did it again! Such a festive day for all us ‘Willpower in a bookstore? What’s that like?’ folks to celebrate, support, and enjoy the excellent indie bookstore scene we’ve got here.
My mom and I went for it again—we took the challenge and went to 17 indie bookstores yesterday so we are Seattle Independent Bookstore Day Champions once more! (And can continue to get that lovely 25% off for another year.)
Here’s a recap of our adventures:
We did a similar route as last year, meeting up on Bainbridge Island (I took the ferry, Mom drove up on the peninsula side), doing an outer swing then zagging around in the metro area, trying to avoid probable Viadoom* traffic areas (successfully!) and be efficient, but also sure we got to each store before they closed.
*For non-Seattleites: the Alaskan Way Viaduct downtown is closed for 2 weeks, which just started. Highway 99 runs on the Viaduct. There are about 90,000 vehicle trips per weekday on 99. There is only one North-South freeway alternative and its usual traffic hovers somewhere between bad and horrendous. So it could have been a major impediment to our day, but wasn’t! (At least not for us). Who knows what Monday’s commutes will hold but the impending workweek concerns us not in this post!
Twitter was pretty lively with both #independentbookstoreday and #SEAbookstoreday action. My favorite early morning tweet:
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Mom (aka Marianne) at Eagle Harbor, first stop for us and lots of others—place was buzzing already at 8:30. I saw a family we had crossed paths with last year outside doing the traditional picture-in-front-of-the-bookstore and we were all like, “Hey!!” The first of many really fun Bookstore Day community moments. I bought The Big Short by Michael Lewis because I had tried to watch the movie but it’s filmed in that shaky handheld docu-style that makes me motion sick so I couldn’t finish watching it, but I really want to know how it all unfolded.
Stop #2, Liberty Bay Books in Poulsbo, seen here in a just-for-SEABookstoreDay coloring page. Each store did a few little somethings special for the day in addition to the national Bookstore Day exclusives* and it really added to the personality of each.
* I missed out on the cool stencil and the Neil Gaiman coloring book (wow those sold out fast) but did get the Ann Patchet The Care and Feeding of an Independent Bookstore: Three Instructive Essays, in which she says:
“You may have heard the news that the indepedent bookstore is dead, that books are dead, that maybe even reading is dead—to which I say, “Pull up a chair, friend. I have a story to tell.”
HELL YEAH.
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Read the entire lovely post, a tribute to independent bookstores, the things they carry, and the people who love them! Catherine and her mom are not just Indie Champions– they are treasures! (Seriously, you have to see Marianne’s cheese and crackers set-up and the sheer volume of things they bought– with such delight. Your heart will soar! You can also read about last year’s adventure here.)