Indie Bookstore Day

This past Saturday was Indie Bookstore Day.  I only learned about it a week ago; I don’t know how I’d never heard of it before.  It was the easiest excuse I gave myself to buy more books.  I went out of town to visit some family and figured I’d hit up a couple bookstores on my way back.  According to indiebound.org there are only 3 bookstores near me that participate in the day. 

I assumed this day is similar to Record Store Day or Comic Book Day where these shops offer one time limited purchases as a way to increase foot traffic into the ever-dwindling brick and mortar stores. I only went to Comic Book Day once and I was hoping it would renew my interest in comics.  I tried collecting some when I was younger and was always disappointed at how short they were, the price of them, and how you have to read a hundred of them just to see how the story ends (I don't think the story ever ends).  I never bothered with Record Store Day.  Despite being a music junkie I have no interest in collecting vinyl records at inflated prices (I still collect CDs).

So, if you’ve never heard of Indie Bookstore Day here is the lowdown.  It started in 2015 by the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association; it’s celebrated on the last Saturday in April; and, as I assumed, participating stores have exclusive items for sale.

After lunch, on Saturday, I headed back home with plans to stop at maybe three bookstores.  In the end I only went to one; Curious Book Shop.  It was not one participating in Indie Bookstore Day but it’s my favorite local used bookstore.  I don’t go too often because it’s further away and I hate paying for parking. Curious Book Shop is what I think of as an ideal used bookstore.  It has the musty smell of old books (the owner also ran Archives Book Shop which sold more rare and collectible books but closed earlier this year), towering wooden stacks, books tucked away in every nook and cranny, and very fair prices.  It reminds me so much of The Dawn Treader Book Shop in Ann Arbor; where I lived in my 20’s.  Bookstores like these I could spend hours in.  It feels like treasure hunting.  You never know what you may find. 

My guilty pleasure to read are horror novels.  Especially retro paperbacks from the 70’s and 80’s.  Maybe it’s because in horror it seems like anything is possible.  These are the first books I’m always looking for when I check out a used bookstore.  On this Saturday hunting trip, I followed a group of college students into the shop.  They proceeded to stand right in front of where I wanted to go: the stairway to the basement.  That is where the horror section is kept.  I excused myself past them and hurried down the steps.  There are not too many shelves of horror novels, and there are way more hardbacks of Dean Koontz and Stephen King than anything else.  This makes the search easy.  Right away I found three books I wanted.  I scooped them up and  headed back upstairs to check out the rest of the store.  There was nothing of interest in the general fiction section but I did find a fourth book in the paperback science fiction wall.  As always, I could have kept looking but the afternoon was slipping away so I paid for my books and headed home.

The book I bought were:

Peaceable Kingdom by Jack Ketchum (collection of horror short stories)

The Godforsaken by Chelsea Quinn Yarboro (horror novel about a family cursed during the Spanish Inquisition)

Night Warriors by Graham Masterton (horror novel about three people that have to fight the spread of evil to save humanity)

Glory Road by Robert Heinlein (a space adventure where a discharged military guy travels the Glory Road to find the Egg of a Phoenix)

I’m very happy with how I spent my first Indie Bookstore Day.  While there were online book sales for the day I didn’t bother looking because I had found just what I wanted; plus online shopping makes it too easy to go broke.  As always, there are too many books to read and not enough time.  Hopefully by the time next year’s Indie Bookstore Day arrives I will have read at least half of these books.