A Crafter's Life, Independent bookstores

Independent Bookstores: Wonderful & Magical Places (repost)

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Terry the Quilting Husband and I were scheduled to meet friends in downtown Bend, OR for lunch today at 11:30 am, however the Bend Christmas parade was scheduled to begin at 12 noon downtown today. 

So to avoid the impending parking challenges, we headed to downtown an hour early and wandered around until it was time to meet friends for lunch. Most of our wandering time was spent in the wonderful downtown indie bookstore – Dudley’s Bookshop Cafe. 

Armed with steaming mug of cocoa I browsed Dudley’s well curated collection; ran into a fellow art quilter from my SAQA group and had a lovely chat; and remembered a post I wrote about Dudley’s in December 2016.

INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORES (WONDERFUL & MAGICAL PLACES)

I won’t pretend I do not shop on Amazon.com for book deals or that I do not go to our local Barnes & Noble bookstore, but today I was reminded just how wonderful and magical Independent Bookstoresare to have in one’s community. I plan to spend more time at indie bookshops!

Today we went for a wander around and hot beverage at downtown Bend’s Dudley’s Bookshop Cafe.

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As the sign upstairs at Dudley’s Bookshop Cafe reads:

Independent Bookstores are wonderful & magical places because each book will have been hand selected, you know all of them are jewels just waiting to be discovered…

After the friendly shopkeepers filled darling ceramic mugs with our hot cocoa (for me) and mocha (for Terry the Quilting Husband), we had a leisurely and delicious wander about the shop browsing and their well curated selections.

Come wander the shop with us for a moment…

Downstairs, where you enter Dudley’s bookshop and immediately think – “well this would be a fine place to nest for awhile”:

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People were nesting – they have WiFi and some were on their laptops and some were sipping their hot beverages and reading a book (or previewing a book!).

Among the shelves of books are fun things and objects to look at, including this wickedly funny sign:

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Now head upstairs (carefully carry your mug of hot beverage with you!) and check out the painted stairs celebrating books:

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(I love the step that reads: “Fifty Shades of Dudley’s)

At the top of the landing you will find a shelf of books (in case it was too long a journey to go without being able to browse any books from the bottom of the stairs to the top).

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Now, turn the corner…and…WOW: Here is the cozy reading nook you might have searched for while browsing any bookstore (and maybe dreamed about in your own home):

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The secret OCD person inside of me wanted to go and fix the left side of the curtain, but I was here to browse books, not adjust decor so I left it alone – ha!

After walking by the cozy reading nook, you come upon the upstairs room with more books to browse – how about a Art/Film/Music book to add to your collection?

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Even the bathroom was delightful and had this great poster called A Plotting of Fiction Genres:

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If you would like to know more about this poster, I did find it online at Pop Chart Lab. I did not want to spend too long in the bathroom reading it, but I was very impressed with it in my brief time with it!  Here is a better overall photo from the seller’s website.

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I could not leave Dudley’s Bookshop without a little something. If you have followed my blog for a while, you know I love our local public library and lately I get most of my reading through borrowing from the library (as I have been very naughty at bookshops in the past and have a huge book collection). I am trying not to add more books permanently to my home but I did want a little something from the indie bookstore, so I bought a cool set of greeting cards that you color yourself!

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Two of my many favorite authors, Neil Gaiman and Ann Patchett are huge advocated for preserving independent bookstores (Ann Patchett even owns her own indie bookstore, Parnassus Books) and have lauded the value of preserving these shops in their writing.

I will close this post with a Neil Gaiman quote, which is also on the Dudley’s Bookshop Cafe website, from his wonderful and magical book American Gods:

What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore it knows it’s not fooling a soul. – Neil Gaiman

Dudley’s has a wonderful addition to the front of their shop – an antique typewriter! I had to take a photo to share!
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Published by tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Quilter, crafter, obsessive tea drinker and lover of all furry creatures (especially dogs and cats) - join me on my tierneycreates blog as I share stories from "A Crafter's Life".

25 thoughts on “Independent Bookstores: Wonderful & Magical Places (repost)”

  1. Love that typewriter. And that type bookstore. Looks like one at my daughter’s in Viroqua, WI, Driftless Books. (Everything up there is named Driftless something because glaciers missed their area.)

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    1. Your daughter has an indie bookstore – very cool! I will check it out if I am ever in Viroqua WI! I was completely enamored with the typewriter – I did an extended photoshoot with it but settled on just posting one photo. 🙂

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  4. Bookstores are magical. My favorite independently owned bookstore is BookPeople, in Austin.
    I love this store! http://www.bookpeople.com/
    I think it would be cool to plan a trip across the states centered on independent book stores and quilt shops.

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  7. I remember this post! (it’s incredible where the time goes). What a delightful place to have some cocoa and go book-browsing; it looks like the kind of place I’d be happy to spend the entire day! 🙂 That’s a cool typewriter in the window, too – I still can’t believe that writers used those in the pre-PC and WordPress days!

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    1. I am older than you and I remember in the late 1980s (you might not have been born yet lol) typing papers for school on a typewriter (a modern one not one like the photo, ha!) and having to use correction fluid to cover mistakes and type over them! I remember having to write out a paper long hand and then type it – yikes! I was so happy when personal computers became popular!

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      1. I remember both (well, I remember typing on an electric word processor as a kid, and was told it was not a toy). 🙂 White out what a staple at our high school, haha, though by that time, we were learning to type on MS DOS computers. They’ve taken some of the pain out of writing. 🙂

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      1. It would certainly be a great indulgence. I actually used to sell childrens books as a business from home, hiking boxes of books to and fro kids activity groups and schools. Unfortunately the bottom dropped out of that business due to the internet!

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  10. This is a post that I had somehow missed. Love it! I wanted to grab a book and curl up with cocoa in a cozy nook! I probably would’ve lost track of time in there and my friends would be calling me to see where I was! Thanks for sharing!

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