I lived in Brooklyn not too far from the store for many years before I moved out of the city, and it was always such a warm, wonderful place to visit, shop, or attend a book event, reading or party. Last year, I went to see my client, Aimee Wimbush-Bourque, author of BROWN EGGS AND JAM JARS and the upcoming THE SIMPLE BITES KITCHEN, there during a winter snowstorm and it was the most cozy, intimate experience being inside that place surrounded by books while she read from the book and her kids ran around enjoying themselves too while outside it was a big, fat slushy mess.

So it was such a happy story to learn that the author and Brooklynite Emma Straub and her husband are going to be opening up a bookstore in Brooklyn called Books Are Magic (how cute is that?).  And also that they’ve received a ton of support for it from the community and others. Losing a neighborhood bookstore like BookCourt is like losing a member of your extended family. The neighborhood just won’t be the same without it.

I don’t live in Brooklyn anymore, but I look forward to visiting Books Are Magic before too long. What’s your favorite local bookstore?

And as if Maine couldn’t get any better, big news today: a new independent bookstore is opening in Portland. Print: A Bookstore will join the three other independent booksellers in town, and the idea that a city of 100,000 can support four bookstores is sure to warm any booklovers heart. But the more I think about it, books are all around whenever we head up north. Damariscotta, a town of less than 3,000 residents not only has a thriving bookstore in the Maine Coast Book Shop, but the adjacent Skidompha Public Library is the cultural center of town (with possibly the best name ever).

Sadly, Print: A Bookstore won’t be open until October, so we’ll miss it this summer. But knowing that there will be a new place to browse on our way up (we often spend the night in Portland on the way to Damariscotta) is a good incentive to plan a fall trip…

As if I didn’t already love every single thing about Ann Patchett, just one more thing to swoon over. The store’s name, Parnassus, actually comes from Christopher Morley’s 1917 novel “Parnassus on Wheels,” about a middle-aged woman who travels around selling books out of a horse-drawn van. So it’s fitting that they are now taking the “bookstore on wheels” concept literally.

I was thinking as I was reading this charming article about bringing books to the masses that it’s really not that different than what Scholastic has done all these years for children’s books. They schlep busloads of books and set them up in schools across the country where parents, teachers and kids can shop in the comfort of their own gym, and a portion of sales gets donated back to the school. I personally buy a majority of holiday gifts each fall at the Scholastic Book Fair, and I’m so thrilled that next year I’ll have one of my books for sale there – Cecilia Galante’s THE WORLD FROM UP HERE. And this year, they’re doing a bus tour called Summer Reading Road Trip with events all over the country so they’re getting on the “buswagon” too. Who doesn’t love a good road trip?

Scholastic’s is a brilliant and a successful sales model that I think is unique, although are there other “bring the books to the buyer” methods I’m not aware of? What are other ways you can think of to get books into readers’ hands? Books on a bus is so fun, I’m seriously thinking about renting a bus to sell books this summer! Ok, I joke, my lifestyle so does not allow for such a thing, but I love the idea of it so much. One can dream.

Unlike what I had experienced in America (living in several small towns without much public transportation), everyone seemed to be reading. My host sister and host brother (ages 16 and 12, respectively) brought two or three books with them to the beach. (I was charmed by the German “vacation books”—slender, inexpensive volumes of fiction that would be typed as “beach reads” or “light reading” here—but for €5 or even sometimes less.) It seemed like everyone carried at least one book around with them to read on the bus, the train, while waiting in line. Bookstores abounded.

I think part of the German insistence and delight in reading comes from their idea of a “Kulturnation”—a country bound together by tradition, literature, language, and religion. The act of reading and writing has always furthered (and often challenged) these aspects of any country. Back in the U.S., as I read headlines about the demise of independent bookstores, Borders closing, and many questions about the future of print books, I wondered how the Germans did it. Now granted, Germany is considerably smaller than the United States, and one might argue that we do have a substantial book culture here. But is it more due to geographical size and population than an actual ingrained cultural tradition? How could we here in America make turning to a book as natural as turning to our phones or another electronic device?

What do you think of the U.S.’s book culture? How can we make it better? Or do you think we’re doing just fine, after all?

**If you’re further interested in this topic, I found this article, originally published by The Nation in 2012 to be very interesting and helpful.

Like most publishing people (really, like most book people) I’m thrilled at how nicely the independent stores are doing after being pummeled by giant corporations starting in the ‘90s and facing the threat of death by e-books that doomsayers predicted (and still do).  What I didn’t expect, and find rather ironic, is the fact that we now are all worrying about  and rooting for Barnes & Noble’s survival in the wake of its recent struggles.  B&N, once publishing’s bad guy, has relinquished its evil empire status to the mighty (Villanous? Depends on who you talk to…) Amazon, with the result that people who once reviled the company are now offering suggestions on how to stay afloat for the sake of the book business as a whole.  This piece by Jason Diamond in Flavorwire goes to the heart of the issue and suggests that B&N act more like an Indie in order to save itself.  Did I mention irony?

As much as I love a musty, cluttered shop that I can lose myself in for hours at a time, growing up in the Miami sprawl, I went to the Waldenbooks or Borders at the mall because quaint, pretty Indie bookstores were not just a stroll away.  Sure, these mall venues lacked charm, but they offered access to the titles I wanted and needed and I was grateful they were around.  I do hope B&N, which effectively replaced those old mall stores, will hang on for a new generation of readers who get dropped off at the mall by their parents.

So, what’s your favorite bookstore?  And why?

I’m not sure that given the present climate in the United States that there is really much likelihood that our model will borrow something from the French, but it is, however, interesting to look abroad at a very different literary landscape and indulge in some armchair travel.

Over the long weekend, I came across this pretty terrific list of 15 Summer Reads Handpicked by Indie Booksellers, and suffice it to say that more than a few of these titles have since infiltrated my own summer reading list.

What types of books do you prefer to read during the summer? Captivating thrillers that will chill you to your core? Adventure novels set in the Arctic where you can easily imagine yourself when it gets too hot to bear?

To that end, the lovely folks at Huffington also provide people in the #1 town of Alexandria, VA with a list of alternatives to Amazon. Still, it’s always interesting to see who’s buying what online.

Which leads me to my questions for the day: What are the top genres you tend to buy online? And which ones do you tend to buy in person?

I’m going to investigate my own book buying habits tonight, and I encourage you to do the same!

I wandered around the B&N behemoth at the top of Union Square the other day and thought about the ways that stores innovate in what are not the easiest times.  As I passed the sizable Lego section of the store on the escalator (and glanced down at the enormous book-reading Lego Men that I’d strongly consider purchasing if they were for sale), I realized that it’s well past the time that I cringed in response to non-book space in the store.  Don’t get me wrong: when that particular store expanded their Nook…nook, I was very happy they found space from the DVD/music area and not the bookshelves.  But even when I forced myself, I found I was happy that people who might not go out of their way to buy books have to pass tons of books on their way over to build at the Lego table.  What use are shelves and shelves and shelves of books that will be returned if no one goes into the store to buy them, after all?  However complex the economics, eyes on books seems better than not.

Over the years, we’ve seen stores adding cafés and media and toys and games.  We’ve seen stores try to find a home for themselves in a world of e-books with things like the Nook and the customized e-book shelf talkers that Melville House offers indies, as recently reported by Laura Miller in Salon.  When I worked at B&N, the store I was in had recently begun an events program (which was nothing new in general, but it’d previously been deemed too small to find the space for them), with signings, readings, story time and writing groups.  Whatever the results may be in this time of great change for the industry, I’m pleased any time I see that a piece of the intricate publishing ecosystem won’t go down without a fight (so long as it’s not at the expense of authors, of course—the rest of us are nothing without them).

For those of you who sometimes shop in physical bookstores, what do you see stores doing in a bid for survival?  Any great ideas that you think should be adopted more widely?  Any ideas you wish they’d try?