Book Nerds, Unite!

(Above) The 2019 Seattle Passport map of bookshops.

Should this page appear quiet tomorrow, it will be because I’m off participating in the week’s premier local literary event: the fifth annual Seattle Independent Bookstore Day. For those keeping track, this is the fourth consecutive year I have taken part in that all-day celebration of reading and retailing. The first occasion was back in 2016.

While many people will likely visit one or two shops, just to feel a part of things, tomorrow’s main feature will be the “Passport Challenge,” or “Champion Challenge.” It begins when you get your hands on a copy of the Passport bookstore map, available free of charge from any of the stores engaged in this contest. As Paul Constant explains in The Seattle Review of Books, the goal is to “pick up a passport stamp at every single participating bookstore in the Seattle area—that’s 26 bookstores, though you only have to visit one location for local chains like Third Place Books and University Book Store, so it’s actually more like 21 stores—in one day.” Accomplishing that task, he notes, will win the passport holder “25 percent off at all the bookstores for the whole next year. Last year, some 500 foolhardy people completed that challenge, and organizers are expecting more this year.” Which is pretty amazing, considering that finishing the lengthy Seattle course can take 12 or more hours. So one has to start early—very early this time around, as there are two additional stores to be reached. (In 2018, the goal was a comparatively meager 19 bookshops.) For the second time, I am running this race with my niece, Amie-June Brumble, who will be picking me up at the thoroughly ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m. The first place we plan to visit is a ferry ride away, and opens at 7.

Seattle isn’t the only city taking part in Saturday’s festivities; the event started in California in 2014, and has since spread to other U.S. metro areas, including Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis. But my present hometown—which ranks among the best-read towns in the United States—has become a chief player in this annual salute to indie retailers. And 2019 is a special one for me, in particular, as I have spent time over the last four months helping to launch one of the two new Seattle locations that “book crawlers” will visit during their tour: Madison Books, in the upscale Madison Park neighborhood, which officially opens tomorrow—just in time.

Sadly, none of the shops along our route specializes in crime fiction; the once-terrific Seattle Mystery Bookshop closed in September 2017, and no local replacement has yet been inaugurated. However, mystery bookstores elsewhere in the country are joining these festivities.

To learn more about the birth and development of Independent Bookstore Day, check out this Publishers Weekly report. For a list of (almost) all participating U.S. shops, consult this handy map.

READ MORE: “Bookstore Mysteries: Independent Bookstore Day,” by Janet Rudolph (Mystery Fanfare).