Here's an idea for Black Friday. Buy books. At a bookstore. A real live brick and mortar bookstore. Call your friends and go on a bookstore shopping spree. See how many independent bookstores - new and used - you can find in a 25-mile radius. Buy at least one book in each one. And when the clerk - and in these bookstores, that's probably the proprietor - rings you up, smiles, and says thank you, you smile right back and say no. Thank you.
I've told my readers before about the Field Guide to Bookstores project I started a few years back. I got side-tracked, but before I did, I visited at least 3/4 of the bookstores in Seattle. What surprised and delighted me was discovering the existence of specialty bookstores I never dreamed existed, and the unexpected treasures to be found in more than a few. I've highlighted some of these on this page over the past year. Here are five more of my favorites.
Ladybug Books lives in a small green-shingled house with a lovely open porch surrounded by flowerbeds. You can sit here and browse through the $.10 bookrack of old romances.
Recycled Reader had a big red sign with a cat painted on it. I wonder if anyone ever shelled out the $12,500 asking price for a 1701 edition of Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible, 3rd edition. It was about the size of a small footstool!
Seaocean Book Berth is still there, if a full-blown website is to be believed. I hope Master Mariner Christopher Flavell is still at the helm. Whaling, Age of Sail, Australia, Slaves, Cook & Bligh, Armada, Drake, Nelson, Oceans, Salvage, Treasure Hunts, Naval History, Local Boating Guides and Chartbooks, Conrad, Melville, and Pepys. Yes, Pepys.
Cinema Books, a small shop, filled to the brim with stuff about the stuff of which movies are made.
Math ‘n’ Stuff. You didn't think math was your thing? You didn't go to a bookstore to study algebra? You fools! This is a magic shop!
And now, it being two days 'til Thanksgiving, I have a little shopping to do.