Friday, May 16, 2008

Next Stop on Our Tour: Island Books
















Welcome to our first island indie! Since 1974, Island Books on Mercer Island, Washington has been serving the Mercer Island community and the greater Seattle area. They cite "staying connected" as their thirty plus year goal.

You won't find the proverbial on-line shopping cart on their website-- and why? "...we honestly prefer to have you come into our store. We love talking with you, giving book advice, and swapping stories. We have chosen rather to invest in an intelligent cadre of booksellers who average more than 12 years of bookselling each. They delight in answering challenging book queries and finding gifts for the enigmatic, rushed, or needy. They like to listen, and they give pretty good advice."

Their desire to connect and create community is evident from the photos above with their permanent chess table in the travel section, and Pajama Time Story Hour. (Man, I could use one of those tonight!)

Where can you find these cool people?
3014 78th Ave. SE
Mercer Island, WA 98040
800.432.1640 206.232.6920

Thank you to our reader, Alkelda, for nominating this island indie! Alkelda says that Island Books booked her for her first storytelling gig outside of the library.

Congratulations to Melissa Wilkins, the first to correctly guess that the Indie Formerly Known as Yearning Toast is actually the Learning Post in Urbandale, Iowa. Melissa has won her own SVP coffee/tea mug, and is entered into our big end of the month drawing.  And a big thank you to Susan Schmid for nominating them!

Tadmack, Boni, Shari, Kristi, Amy, Ampace4 and Jennifer B also correctly guessed the mystery indie, and are all being entered into the drawing. Best of luck to everyone to one and all!

Let's launch some official whooping and hollering for Island Book Owners, Nancy and Roger, and all their fine staff. Thirty-four years of dedication in service of books. Amazing.

Anchors Away!
Mary & Robin

3 comments:

tanita✿davis said...

Ooh, ditto on the Pajama Time Story Hour. Sounds like good times there! And yay for Island Books hiring sterling storyteller Alkelda! And for their commitment to 1:1 bookselling -- that's actually pretty darned cool.

Jennifer R. Hubbard said...

A bookstore on an island. Is that heaven or what?

Kristi Valiant said...

What fun bookstores! Thanks for posting about all of these; I wish we had an independent bookstore here...

I'm excited to be in the drawing at the end of the month.