Today is Independent Bookstore Day . . . that’s cause for celebration!

Regular readers know I love independent bookstores. My go-to bookstores in the Washington area are Politics and Prose on Connecticut Avenue and the relatively new People’s Books in Takoma Park. Through the years I’ve bought countless works from their shelves; participated in several small book group discussions; and attended a number of their author events, most recently for historian Heather Cox Richardson (P&P) and Robert Jones (People’s).

I’ll also visit independent bookstores on my travels, often mentioning them in a review of the book or books I purchased while in town. Just a sampling include:

• Brookline Booksmith in Brookline, Massachusetts, where I never fail to walk out the door without a new murder mystery in hand.

• Pegasus Books in Berkeley, California, where I bought several works by the wonderful writer Natalie Goldberg.

• Pacific Grove, California’s Bookworks, where I naturally stocked up on some John Steinbeck.

• Books, Inc. in Alameda, California, where I picked up a classic spy novel to read on the plane.

• I found a work on architecture at the terrific Elliott Bay Bookstore in Seattle, which is housed in a beautifully rehabilitated old building.

• And it was only appropriate that I found a book on returning to analog in our lives from Powell’s City of Books in Portland, Oregon, that most analog of bookstores.

Frankly, there are many more too numerous to list.

I even find and support independent bookstores when I’m traveling, like The Red Wheelbarrow and Shakespeare and Company (both in Paris), and the Shetland Times Bookshop in Scotland.

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Since today is a Saturday—music day here at MTC—I thought it would be fun to share a few songs about books. Let’s begin with a classic (aren’t they all) by the Beatles, Paperback Writer. Here’s the tune’s backstory from Wikipedia:

“Paperback Writer” was largely written by Paul McCartney, who based the lyrics on a challenge made to him by his Aunt Lil. McCartney said in 1966: “Years ago, my Auntie Lil said to me, ‘Why do you always write songs about love all the time? Can’t you ever write about a horse or the summit conference or something interesting?’ So, I thought, ‘All right, Auntie Lil.'” According to Radio Luxembourg DJ Jimmy Savile’s recollection, the inspiration for the song came backstage at a concert venue when McCartney, mindful of his aunt’s request, saw Ringo Starr reading a book and declared his intention to write a song about a book.

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Another Beatles book tune is John Lennon’s I Am the Walrus. The title of the 1967 composition “refers to Lewis Carroll’s poem The Walrus And The Carpenter, which is included in the 1871 book Through The Looking Glass.“

And, if that’s not enough, the end of the track also includes snatches of a BBC radio dramatization of Shakespeare‘s King Lear: “If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body; / And give the letters which thou find’st about me / To Edmund Earl of Gloucester; seek him out / Upon the British party: O, untimely death!”

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I Write the Book by the wonderful singer-songwriter Patty Griffin was “one of the six songs from Patty’s first official release”—which was sold on cassette tapes at her early gigs. This song was recorded in 1991 at a small studio in a barn behind the house where she lived in Arlington, MA.

I write the book on loneliness | I write the poem on pain | I’m the obituary in the newspaper | Lying out in the pouring rain

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Does it get any better than Dick Clark introducing Newark, New Jersey’s own The Monotones and the classic Who Wrote the Book of Love? Nope.

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For those a little younger, here’s Elvis Costello and his hot guitar licks with a live version of Everyday I Write the Book.

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Let’s end with the always entertaining John Hiatt singing his composition Book Lovers from 1983.

I heard the news from every fool in town | You got somebody new | And I never hurt so bad | The strangest fiction just came true . . .

Since you turned away | I turned the page on my happiness | We were just book lovers | Once upon a time you were mine | Now I must confess | We were just, we were just book lovers | (Since you turned away I turned the page on my happiness) | Chapter one- having fun (Once upon a time you were mine Now I must confess) | Chapter two- look at me and you | Chapter three- chapter three, baby I was down on my knees . . .

If you are a book lover, go find a great independent bookstore in your community and start reading. Maybe you’ll even be inspired to write a song!

More to come . . .

DJB