A Love of Independent Bookstores

A tour through some of the indies that shaped my reading life

When I was a child, there was one stretch of streets that I loved going to more than any other in my hometown of Pasadena. Not only were the two blocks of East Colorado Boulevard between South Madison and South Oak Knoll Avenues home to my favorite restaurant, La Fiesta Grande¹, they also housed a chaotic used bookstore² where everything seemed to be $2.50 and Vroman’s Bookstore. The best Friday nights were when my family would go to La Fiesta for dinner and then find ourselves in one of those two bookshops to do a little browsing and buying.

Vroman’s was an important part of my childhood, from hours spent browsing for books with my parents to attending the Redwall book club that was run out of the children’s section on the second floor.

Photo by Iñaki del Olmo on Unsplash

When I became a teenager, that two-stretch block of Colorado Boulevard became even better with the arrival of the Laemmle’s Playhouse 7 movie theatre and a Target. Suddenly my friends and I were spending all of our time bouncing between shops, but we always came back to the bookstore without fail.

I am a bookworm raised in a family of bookworms, so book tourism has always been a part of my life. I remember a family trip to Portland, Oregon, to visit friends that featured a wander around Powell’s. I had just begun to read Agatha Christie’s mysteries, and I was incredibly impressed by the wall of her books I found in that enormous store.

I went to Moe’s Books in Berkley, California, with friends on a high school Speech and Debate trip and spent what felt like hours deciding what to buy before purchasing a copy of Jane Austen’s juvenile writing and a beautiful hardcover volume of Rumi’s poetry because I was trying to impress a boy I had a very unrequited crush on.³

Then there was Tea and Tattered Pages,⁴ a delightful second-hand English bookshop on Rue Mayet that I sought out on our first family trip to Paris after seeing it in a guidebook. I would return several times, both with family and as a study abroad student living in the UK, buying old copies of Ian Flemming novels and Golden Age detective fiction.

As a college student, I remember my friends and I piling into whoever’s car was free to drive an hour along I-80 to Iowa City for Indian food (an impossible find in our tiny college town) and a trip to Prairie Lights. I was fairly broke and overworked, so I don’t remember buying all that much, but I loved browsing nonetheless.

When I moved to New York City, I haunted the Strand Books, buying everything from fiction to research books as I wrote my first Victorian-set romance novels. I still love the chaos of the Strand and its 18 miles of books, although sadly I don’t think I ever owned any of its iconic tote bags. I went to launches at Powerhouse Books in Brooklyn Heights and Word Books across the Hudson River in Jersey City, and on a (relatively) recent trip wandered into McNalley Jackson Books at the Seaport with a good author friend of mine.

As a working author, I have fond memories of a conference in Denver where a group of my close author friends and I took a house and walked to Tattered Cover Book Store before the madness of workshops and signings started. We spent an afternoon happily browsing the romance section, as well as visiting a local record store.

When I moved to London, I discovered a new world of independent bookshops, including the stunning Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street and the incredible travel bookshop Stanfords on Mercer Walk. Early on in dating, The Gentleman and I went to John Sandoe Books, a delightfully higgledy-piggledy shop that manages to somehow cram acres of books into a tiny storefront on Blacklands Terrace in Chelsea.

I still love an indie bookstore to this day. I try to buy my books in-person now⁵, in part because I like talking to booksellers. They are almost universally well-read, curious people, often offering up a “I loved that” as they’re scanning your purchases and bagging them up. There is pleasure to be had in lingering over the shelves and debating with yourself which book(s) you will buy. It reminds me of those Friday nights, full from some of the best Mexican food Pasadena had to offer, browsing the shelves on the hunt for my next childhood favorite.

What are you favorite independent bookstores? Please share your memories by leaving a comment below.

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A selection of independent bookstores have kindly partnered with me to offer a limited number of my upcoming novel The Dressmakers of London with bookplates signed by yours truly. The full list of where and how you can get your signed edition for preorder and on sale is available on my website.

1. R.I.P. La Fiesta and your Burrito Gigante. Along with Soda Jerks on South Fair Oaks Avenue and Masa on East Colorado Boulevard, you formed my trifecta of childhood favorites.

2. Sadly the name escapes me about 30 years on.

3. I am positive the boy paid as little attention to my choice of book as he did to me.

4. Sadly, Tea and Tattered Pages is now closed, reportedly due to the death of its owner.

5. I am aware that is not always easy if you live in an area of that is devoid of a good option, but I would point to Bookshop.org (US and UK) as great options if you like the idea of spending your money indie. They are even starting to sell ebooks now.