I sat and read there for an entire day, away from the motel, the students, and the library.
It also has lots of comfy chairs and very nice (for New England) staff and it is absolutely picturesque and welcoming, the way all good bookstores are. Housed in a 1842 gristmill and overlooking the Sawmill River, the used bookstore has some one thousand books. The Bookmill and I have no such relationship I have only visited it once, on a terribly cold and bleak New England day. When we think of our favorite bookstores, more often than not it will be the places we visit over and over again, where we know the staff or have a special corner, or there’s something there that feels like ownership. I swing by Well Read once a year when I’m in the area, though I never mention to the new owner that I used to work there. In actuality, I left Missouri for an MFA program, and after that I got a job at Lit Hub. Louis, feted them over spinach artichoke dip across the street at Bek’s. In another version of my life, I took over Well Read and rented out the apartment above it, lured authors to drop by on their stops in Columbia and St. Which isn’t to say it wasn’t busy-we had plenty of loyal customers, some who would stop by just to “shoot the shit,” as is local custom-but for that one day a week, I got to exist solely and purely in the book world. I was working two other jobs at the time, ostensibly writing a thesis as well, but it never occurred to me to drop this completely superfluous job so I could have one day of rest per week: being at the bookstore was my rest. I’d typically arrive to a cart of newly acquired used books to shelve, and then I’d spend the rest of the day wandering the aisles and pulling out books I’d never heard of, reading a page or two to see what grabbed me inevitably, my home library doubled in size. To my great luck (fate?), Brian’s only employee had just put in their two weeks’ notice, and he offered me the gig.įor a year or so, I’d wake up early every Saturday morning and drive the forty-minute scenic route to Fulton’s historic Brick District, where I’d open the store and run the show till close, pretending the shop was all mine. I’d just discovered a small indie bookstore in Fulton, Missouri (population: 12,000), called Well Read Books, and-mid-panel-I emailed the owner, Brian, asking if I could work for him. In 2015, I was a journalism graduate student attending my first AWP conference, and in the middle of a panel, I realized that I desperately wanted to be in the book world.
Rough draft kingston free#
See our list below, and feel free to shout out your own faves in the comments! There’s no better time to show your local indie a little love-preferably by going to buy a book in person.īut since we live here on the internet, I asked the Lit Hub staff to share a few odes to their own beloved bookstores to mark the occasion.
This weekend marks the 10th anniversary of Independent Bookstore Day, the one-day book party held all across the country on the last Saturday in April every year to celebrate indie bookstores large and small.
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