go to a bookstore today

It's Independent Bookstore Day, and you have no reason not to celebrate.

Lately: I write you from Boston, where I’m visiting for a wedding. Yesterday, I got the chance to visit Beacon Hill Books, which was charmingly vertical and smelled unreal, thanks to a basement cafe. … Otherwise, my house is full of boxes, I have no idea where anything is, and I haven’t eaten a home-cooked meal in 10 days. Maybe longer. … I did make these brownies on Wednesday to share with my class of students at Georgetown. I just finished teaching my sports journalism course there for the fourth and final year, and I figured the last day of the semester called for snacks. These were, in my opinion, the best version of a basic, classic brownie. Nothing unexpected, but still great.

go to a bookstore today (please! thank you!)

When I was in elementary school, my dad worked all the time. He was gone in the mornings before I woke up for school, and some nights he didn’t get home until after I went to bed. He was a surgeon building a practice. His hours were totally out of his control, and every other weekend, he was on call — which meant we’d see him for dinner if we were lucky.

On the weekends he didn’t work, my mom got a much-needed break. My dad took my brother and me to lunch at Steak ‘n’ Shake, to swim at the YMCA and, if we were really lucky, to the bookstore. We alternated between two: a lovely, small shop a mile or two from our house, called City Books, and Library Limited, which wasn’t at all a library or the least bit limited. It was the bookstore of my dreams: multiple floors, with wide corridors between shelves and a new curiosity at every turn. A huge chunk of the second story of the mid-century modern building was devoted to the children’s section, which had a moat stocked with real fish and little fun-house mirrors on the bridges. Occasionally, I’d pause long enough to glimpse myself short and stocky, or tall and thin as a noodle. But most of the time, I’d charge through, desperate to discover as many new books as I could.

We were not kids who had lots of things, my brother and me. There were toys in the basement cabinets, sure, but most of our friends had more. And there was a shelf of VHS tapes and a dress-up trunk full of costumes and cast-offs. But let me tell you: We had books. We had more books than you can imagine, and each weekend, we could have four or five more — as long as we’d finished whichever titles we’d brought home last time. We’d always finished them.

I could’ve spent all day at Library Limited — or at City Books, small as it was. There, I’d scan the shelf lined with Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume titles, willing my favorite authors to write something new, faster. Some weeks, they had, and I’d start reading right there, standing up, oblivious. But eventually it became time to make choices — between dragons and fairies, Nancy Drew and Ramona Quimby. It was impossible, but I knew the books would be there the next time I showed up. It felt infinite.

And then a Borders opened up a block from City Books, and soon there was no more City Books. Then we heard about a website called Amazon, and Library Limited shut its doors. Then we begrudgingly wandered Borders and even came to like it, right in time for Amazon to gobble it up. Bookstores were my first tangible lesson in economics, and my parents explained things succinctly: Independent bookstores were a thing of the past.

Today, City Books is a Potbelly sandwich shop, and Library Limited houses the offices of a healthcare corporation. There’s a joke in there somewhere, about gluttony and avarice and what happens when people stop reading, but I’ll spare us all. Because it turns out, people never stopped reading, and eventually they realized they didn’t want to get their books in white-and-blue padded envelopes anymore.

Between 2016 and 2024, the number of independent bookstores registered with the American Booksellers Association nearly doubled, to 2,433. That’s bonkers growth. As for why, I have my own theories — about demand for an alternative to Amazon, about the need for community spaces, about how quickly people realized that reading on screens was far inferior to turning actual, physical, scribble-on-able pages.

For the past five months, I’ve been working part-time at a brand-new independent bookstore, Wonderland Books in Bethesda, Md. I’ve been dreaming of one day opening my own shop in St. Louis. I’ve been learning the nuts and bolts of the business — and about the ineffable magic a bookstore’s walls contain.

There are kind, curious shoppers, of course, people who want recommendations and who can’t wait to tell me what they’ve read lately. There are also people who come to the store every couple of days — every day, even — to sit and read, or just to say hello. Some are looking for an inclusive, comfortable place where they can page through something familiar.

And there are thousands of little kids just like I was, who run past the piles of stuffed animals and sticker books toward the shelves piled with picture books and chapter books and graphic novels. And there are so many more ideas now, so much more representation, in the books these kids are taking home. These stores — they’re making us so much better.

I don’t know who I would be without books — without bookstores. For a few months when I was 11, I read everything there was to read about Josephine Bonaparte, all because I happened upon a book about her life with a particularly pretty cover. Judy Blume taught me about periods and scoliosis, and from Beverly Cleary I learned what it would be like to have a sister, and from Brian Jacques I developed an interest in government through the delicate diplomacy of medieval rodents.

Once, in the line to check out at Library Limited, there was a small stack of one slim title: “A Modest Proposal.” I picked it up and started paging through. Soon, my dad glanced over. “No one’s eating anyone else,” he explained. The author was actually implying the opposite. I tried my best to understand, and I wasn’t frightened, because it’s impossible to be frightened in a bookstore. And today, anytime I read satire, I am transported for a moment to the early ‘90s, in line with my dad on a precious Saturday, my arms holding the entire world bound up in paperback.

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Today is Independent Bookstore Day, which is exactly what it sounds like. If you have a favorite bookstore, consider stopping by. And if you still get your books on Amazon, consider a momentary change of habit. Maybe it’ll stick. So, without further ado, I will now present you with a non-exhaustive, alphabetical list of some of the best bookstores across all corners of the U.S.:

Backwater Books, Ellicott City, Md.

Bank Square Books, Mystic, Conn.

Beacon Hill Books, Boston, Ma.

Blue Bicycle Books, Charleston, S.C.

Bridge Street Books, Washington, D.C.

Bold Fork Books, Washington, D.C.

Books Are Magic, Brooklyn, N.Y.

E Shaver Booksellers, Savannah, Ga.

Faulkner House Books, New Orleans, La.

Left Bank Books, St. Louis, Mo.

Octavia Books, New Orleans, La.

Parnassus Books, Nashville, Tenn.

Powell’s, Portland, Ore.

Solid State Books, Washington, D.C.

Spotty Dog Books, Hudson, N.Y.

Wonderland Books, Bethesda, Md.

Word after Word Books, Truckee, Ca.