This might sound more impressive than it actual is, traveling to three states in one week but when you live in a corner of a state, it’s fairly easy to travel to the others in a giant circle. A few weeks ago, I took a little mini vacation before all the snow and ickiness came and visited four independent bookstores relatively close to my area. They were all about an hour to two hours away from my parents’ house.
I feel like I should have some kind of disclaimer, since COVID is still a thing. Everywhere we went, we wore masks and stayed socially distanced as possible (as you’ll see some locations that wasn’t possible). In fact, many of the places I went to had much more strict mask guidelines than in my own county and more people wearing them, and wearing them correctly, that I was somewhat impressed.
Anyway, here’s my travelogue of the bookstores!
Books and Burrow
The best independent bookstore, hands down, was the one that was the closest to me and one that I visited earlier in the week. It’s called Books and Burrow and focuses on diverse representation and is an Indigenous owned bookstore/gift shop. It opened up a few months ago, so it still had that new bookstore feel and smell; kinda like a new book feel and smell, which I would argue is one of the best scents in the world. While the Burrow part is a play off the Harry Potter home of the Weasleys’, it definitely had that cute, rustic, downtown bookstore vibe, though the outside is very nondescript and you could almost miss it when driving by.
Like I said, they had a wide array of books that focused mostly on African American and Indigenous people’s representation and literature. While it may seem like a narrow focus, they did have other books by generally known authors that anyone would like. Their gift shop was a little on the small side but unique, from wood bookmarks to bookish prints and decor to different bookish teas. I got their Shakespeare Black Tea, and holy cow, it smells and tastes amazing! The only downside is that they’re located an hour away from me, so if I ordered books from them, I’d have to be very strategic about when I went to pick them up. But seeing how this is the first good independent bookstore to open in my area in years, I’d be more than happy to place orders and visit occasionally to help keep them open!
Chapters
While Chapters listed as a bookstore, you wouldn’t necessarily think it’s one when you walk in. Located in a beautiful downtown building, it’s probably about 20% bookstore, 20% coffee shop, and 60% gift shop. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good gift shop but I was really expecting a good bookstore after hearing the hype around the store. The books seemed to be either gently used or like brand new (to use some Amazon terminology here) and they also seemed to focus on diverse representation with some general authors and books sprinkled in here and there.
The gift shop part, to their credit, had a fair amount of bookish related items as well as general, and sometimes funny, gifts. For example, my brother-in-law’s birthday is coming up and I found a little dog bandana that said “I’m the reason we can’t have nice things” (one of their dogs keeps tearing up all the dog beds in the house and is an expert escape artist). My dad also got a nice mug my mom was eying for Valentine’s Day, so there’s a little bit of everything for everyone here.
The coffee shop part is actually a small Starbucks inside the store. I really didn’t think outside of Target and having their own buildings, Starbucks would be inside independent bookstores. It makes sense though, to move into bookstores who may not be able to make custom coffee drinks, though with the wide availability of espresso machines, I’m sure small bookstores could make a go of it.
Two Friends Books
This has to be the smallest bookstore in the world. Well, maybe not in the world, but it is really, really small. And when I say really small, I mean that they only let in two people at a time; I have a hunch it’s not for COVID reasons, but for fire safety reasons. We almost missed driving by it, not because it was so tiny but because it was located in this really nice, upscale apartment building complex. It almost had that feel of downtown stores, where the commercial stuff is located on the ground floor but apartments are located in the floors above.
Like the other bookstores I visited, it seemed they focused on diverse representation, though their area of focus seemed to be LGBTQA+ books, with popular fiction and nonfiction mixed in. Like the Chapters store, they too served coffee and we accidentally timed our visit during a regular’s normal coffee hour break so he had to wait while we browsed. With that in mind, I felt a huge pressure to buy something because the bookstore was just so small and the store clerk (who was very nice) couldn’t help but stare at us as we browsed (I mean, where else are you gonna look? It was smaller than my college dorm room!).
Once Upon a Time Books
There’s another independent bookstore in Bentonville called Once Upon a Time Books, located on the city’s main square. If you didn’t know, Bentonville is the birthplace of the Wal-Mart corporation, which has a Wal-Mart museum also located on the square in the original Wal-Mart store location. I was hoping for a fantasy themed bookstore or at least something whimsical but it’s a used and rare bookstore. It kinda felt like a scaled-down version of the chain used bookstore, Half-Price books, but with way more rare books to peruse.
Some of them were in plastic sleeves, kinda like comic books, while others were wrapped in protective plastic like we use at the library for our books. The really rare ones were in a cabinet by the front counter. I overheard the store owner say that his most prized rare book was a first edition Slaughterhouse Five signed by the author. We found another book that was a biography of George Brett, my dad’s favorite baseball player, with a signed Sticky-note tucked into the inside cover. It kinda made a little sad because the inscription said, “To Dave, with love from George Brett.” Granted, authors tend to write little quick notes like that when signing books, so “Dave” didn’t have to be a close personal friend but it still makes you wonder. And there’s also the fact that somehow it went from Dave’s possession to a rare bookstore, so either Dave didn’t want the book anymore or whoever inherited the book from him didn’t want it either. I’m not a huge baseball fan, but if George Brett had signed a book for my dad, I’d keep that!
Overall, I had a fun little weekend road trip with my parents. I really love it when I can incorporate bookish site-seeing into my vacations, even if it just visiting the local independent bookstores and buying something to support their businesses.
The Drunk Quill 