Next Saturday is a day for celebrating indie bookstores . . . and to make a big dent in my quest to visit all 29 independent bookshops in the DC region!
This year Independent Bookstore Day—April 25th—comes just in time!
I’m on a bucket list quest to visit all 29 independent bookshops in the DC region this year. * With travel and winter and (insert other excuses), I’m off to a slower-than-hoped-for start. Thanks to the prodding of the good folks at People’s Book in Takoma Park I was reminded that I can visit six (or more) in one day and win a fabulous prize!
So what’s better than visiting your indie bookstore? Visiting more indie bookstores!
The last Saturday in April is Independent Bookstore Day, so Candice and I will be joining the annual bookstore crawl to DC-area indies. Those of us who participate get to choose our own stores and route, invite friends to come along, and support the bookstores we visit with a purchase. Pick up your map at a DC bookstore, or print one out yourself.
Get a stamp at six—or more!—stores, and you’ll win a glorious prize! Enter raffles for a bookish gift card or a year of free audiobooks!
I hope to see you at an independent bookshop on April 25th.
And for the record, I am now a little more than one quarter of the way through, having visited eight bookshops in the DC region. Here’s an update on my 2026 quest:
BOOKSHOPS I HAVE VISITED
- Bridge Street Books, Georgetown (see my review)
- Busboys and Poets, Multiple locations (see my review)
- Laurel Leaf, Takoma Park (review to come)
- People’s Book, Takoma Park (see my review)
- Politics & Prose, Multiple locations (review to come)
- Second Story Books, Dupont Circle (review to come)
- The Lantern, Georgetown (see my review)
- Wonderland Books, Bethesda (review to come)
BOOKSHOPS THAT REMAIN ON MY LIST
- Bard’s Alley, Vienna
- Bergstrom Press & Books, Kensington
- Bol Coop Bookstore, Brookland
- Bold Forks Books, Mt. Pleasant
- Bonjour Books DC, Kensington
- Capitol Hill Books, Eastern Market
- East City Bookshop, Capitol Hill
- Friends to Lovers Bookstore, Alexandria
- JF Books, Dupont Circle
- Kensington Row Bookshop, Kensington
- Kramers, Dupont Circle
- Little District Books, Barracks Road
- Lost City Books, Adams Morgan
- Loyalty Bookstore, Petworth
- Mahogany Books, National Harbor
- Middle East Books, Dupont Circle
- Old Town Books, Alexandria
- One More Page Books, Arlington
- Sankofa Books, Georgia Avenue
- Scrawl Books, Reston
- Solid State Books, Shaw
For those who might wonder about the progress of other items on my bucket list, here’s a post on completing my visits to all 50 states; the latest update on my quest to visit all Major League Baseball ballparks; and, with this year’s travel, I will reach 33 countries visited to get nearer to my goal of 40 countries by the time I reach 80 years of age! I’ll list those in some future post.
SONGS ABOUT BOOKS
And because it is Saturday, I have included a few tunes for book lovers (with a longer list from Penguin UK for those who want to go down a rabbit hole). Note that the Oxford Comma tune by Vampire Weekend should probably be listed NSFW. But book nerds will like it!
For those who like wailing in their music, this Kate Bush tune is just for you, with the description courtesy of the Penguin playlist:
“Inspired, obviously, by the tale of (super angsty and high-maintenance) lovers Heathcliff and Cathy from the Emily Brontë novel of the same name, Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ is that song. Told from the point of view of Cathy, the song references the worst qualities she and Heathcliff display in the novel, and that arguably is a major factor in their doomed love story (‘You had a temper like my jealousy’).”
I’m sure that Lewis Carroll never imagined that “his pipe-smoking caterpillars and magic mushrooms were, almost exactly a century later, celebrated in what is commonly understood to be an ode to hallucinogens.” But that didn’t stop Jefferson Airplane from creating a classic.
And we’ll end with The Beatles and the tune Paperback Writer. The Penguin description describes it pretty well:
“This song is about a writer desperately—and a bit pathetically—trying to get his 1,000-word novel published: ‘Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?/It took me years to write, will you take a look?’ But it’s also a veiled tribute to Edward Lear, a Victorian poet and painter famed for his nonsense poetry. As McCartney, who wrote the song, sings: ‘It’s based on a novel by a man named Lear/And I need a job/So I wanna be a paperback writer.’ This could, in fact, have been an in-joke, even a dig at Lennon, whose own writing at the time had been compared to Lear’s. True or not, the song, it must be said, was certainly catchier than Lennon’s semi-sensical prose.”
Whatever types of books or music you enjoy, take the opportunity to visit an independent bookstore next Saturday!
More to come . . .
DJB
*I originally had 25, but the Potter’s House has closed and then I added five more while preparing this post. Some stores are focused on other items, such as children’s toys or comic books, and I haven’t included those establishments in my list.
Book lovers sign by Tadeusz Zachwieja on Unsplash
MORE TO COME... 