Wednesday, August 22, 2018

WORD Bookstores

Bookstore: WORD Bookstores

Location: Brooklyn, New York

The Official Patter: "WORD has two bookstores: one in Greenpoint, the northernmost neighborhood of Brooklyn, that opened in March of 2007, and one in Jersey City, which opened in December 2013. Our primary goal is to be whatever our communities need us to be! In Brooklyn, that means carrying a lot of paperback fiction (especially classics), cookbooks, board books, and absurdly cute cards and stationery. In addition, we're fiends for a good event, from the classic author reading and Q and A to potlucks and a basketball league (and anything set in a bar). We're a small operation, just 1000 square feet, but we read too much, so it all works out."

Why I Love Them: For me 2015 was the year of Lauren Willig. I do not joke. My friend Ashley who did the blog The Bubble Bath Reader hosted Pink for All Seasons that year, a re-read of the entire Pink Carnation series by Lauren Willig before the release of the final book, The Lure of the Moonflower. I provided monthly casting posts as well as hosting one and a half of the books and providing all the graphics. But the best part of this was just spending that year re-reading all Lauren's books on top of promoting her stand alone, The Other Daughter, with Jazzy July, which you should remember if you read my Friday post... if you haven't, well, it's your loss. Lauren's book launch was going to be at WORD in Brooklyn. Ah, how I wish I could have been there, but thankfully, Ashley was.

Best Buy: So it therefore should come as no surprise to you that The Lure of the Moonflower is my best buy. This was the culmination of the entire Pink Carnation series! This was the end of a series I had spent years enjoying and the last year re-reading. And thanks to WORD I had my dream edition. Though in truth I would have liked it if the last three books in the series had also been released in hardcover, but what can you do? Publishers, am I right? And right now you're probably thinking, damn, her dream editions as this month go on seem to focus more and more on just a few authors... well, you wouldn't be wrong in thinking that. Three times Lauren Willig is my best buy, and Leigh Bardugo comes in a close second. The reason this is is because I reach out to these stores when my favorite authors go on tour and I can't see them, so my best buys are obviously my favorite authors. You might think that this means I only ever interact with these stores the once and move on, but you'd be wrong. If they do a good job I make sure to check out who they have visiting for other books I can buy in the future. What's more is I usually subscribe to their mailing lists and study them carefully wishing I lived closer. And if my "favorite" author visits that store again? You can be sure I'll be purchasing whatever book they are selling. In fact, sometimes I wish I could just buy copies of my favorite books from all the independent bookstores the author visits to support them and the stores... but there is sadly only so much money in my bank account and there are only so many bookshelves in my house, and yes, most of them are filled beyond capacity.  

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