In its nearly half-century in business, Book Passage has held tens of thousands of author events, hosting presidents and Nobel Prize winners and many little-known authors who have gone on to great acclaim. Tucked into an unassuming shopping center in suburban Corte Madera, Book Passage has become the heart of literary life in southern Marin County. Drive five minutes down the road from there, and you can take a ferry to San Francisco, docking just outside Book Passage’s Ferry Building store. We talked to Elaine Petrocelli, Book Passage’s founder and president, about the Corte Madera bookstore. ZYZZYVA: What’s the coziest […]

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Brookline Booksmith opened its doors in 1961, during John F. Kennedy’s first year in office—three blocks from where the future president was born in 1917. Named for its founder, Marshall Smith, who died in 2022, the Booksmith has been a vital and valued part of Brookline’s Coolidge Corner community, just up the hill from Boston. Lisa Gozashti is now the store’s owner, along with Peter Win. ZYZZYVA: What’s the coziest spot in your store for reading?   LISA GOZASHTI: We have two comfy midcentury modernish chairs in front of a large window that faces the street, with a small table to […]

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Every neighborhood deserves at least one good bookstore. For Potrero Hill, a desirable residential area with commanding views of nearby downtown San Francisco, that store is Christopher’s Books. The small street corner shop has been in business since 1991. Jackson Tejeda is its assistant manager. ZYZZYVA: What’s the coziest spot in your store for reading? JACKSON TEJEDA: My favorite spot is in this comfy old wooden chair that we set outside the door on sunny days. Customers sometimes buy books and then sit in the chair in the sun and start reading. This is particularly enjoyable for me as a bookseller when they’ve just […]

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Politics and Prose, Washington, D.C.’s, premier independent bookstore, has been in business since the Reagan Administration—to be precise, the fittingly novelistic year of 1984. Since that time, the store has grown from two employees (the original owners, Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade) to a staff of more than 100 in three locations. Among the store’s many patrons are two local authors: Barack and Michelle Obama. We talked to Wendy Wasserman, the store’s director of marketing and communications. ZYZZYVA: What’s the coziest spot in your store for reading? WENDY WASSERMAN: Cozy can mean so much. For the little ones, we have […]

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In 1894, the first-ever commercial motion picture house—a Kinetoscope parlor—opened its doors in New York City. That same year, in the region that would become the movie capital of the world, Adam Clark Vroman opened a bookstore in Pasadena, California. That business, now with two locations in Los Angeles County, remains open to this day—Vroman’s is the oldest and largest independent bookstore in Southern California. Guy Lopez is one of the store’s booksellers. ZYZZYVA: What’s the coziest spot in your store for reading? GUY LOPEZ: The whole store is cozy, but the coziest spot that comes to mind is a lovely […]

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