Look, I know I’m always rambling on here about how I love bookstores, but have you heard about Bookstore Romance Day? That sounds like some serious affection, so I reached out to the event’s organizer to find out what it is.
“It is a chance for independent bookstores to celebrate the romance genre and to encourage romance readers and authors to connect with their local independent bookstore,” says Bookstore Romance Day founder Billie Bloebaum during a phone interview this week.
The fourth annual event will take place at nearly 400 bookstores across the country on Saturday, Aug. 20 and will feature a range of virtual panels and events (including the brilliant-sounding “Is This a Kissing Book?” panel.) Southern California booksellers are also participating including Bel Canto Books, Creating Conversations, Flintridge Bookstore, {Pages: a bookstore}, Reparations Club, The Ripped Bodice and Sandpiper Books, with potentially more signing up so check the list of participating bookstores.
“Every store does things differently. Some stores are offering discounts, some stores are doing events,” says Bloebaum. “We’re asking that people tag their favorite indie” when participants post photos of their book haul from the day.
Romance is big business, accounting for more than a billion dollars in sales and 18 percent of overall adult book sales, second only to general fiction.
“There’s still a mistaken idea that romance is the classic bodice-rippers of the ‘80s and ‘90s. And I think that has started to change with the boom in the contemporary rom-com and other contemporary romance,” says Bloebaum. “But there are still a lot of people who don’t recognize those books as being romance because they are not what they were trained to think of as romance.”
So what makes a story a romance?
A book lover. (Getty Images)
“Not everything with a central love story is a romance,” says Bloebaum. “Romance as a specific genre has two requirements: 1) That the love story is central to the plot, and 2) That it ends with a happily ever after – or a happy for now. So someone like Nicholas Sparks may write, you know, love stories, but if they don’t end happily, that’s not a romance.”
The obvious happy ending will be if readers go to a bookshop and fall in love with a new book, right? Well, to help you along, Bloebaum consented to do our Q&A this week so read on and you’ll get yourself a ton of excellent reading recommendations.
These newly reissued crime titles are part of The Vintage Crime Black Lizard Collection. (Photo by Erik Pedersen)
While I was away recently, one of the books I turned to was a Ross MacDonald mystery, “The Zebra-Striped Hearse,” featuring his detective Lew Archer.
It was just the right thing to read at the time: compelling, clever, and a little dark as Archer set out to solve a mystery I won’t even try to explain. Peopled with a rogue’s gallery of possible suspects, the novel is largely set in Southern California with side-trips around California and Mexico, rendered with a sharp eye by MacDonald (real name Kenneth Millar) who lived for decades in Santa Barbara.
I’d just finished that book when I found out that Vintage Books was republishing a handful of its Black Lizard crime and noir titles in anniversary editions, including “A Rage in Harlem” by Chester Himes, “Out” by Natsuo Kirino, “A Judgement in Stone” by Ruth Rendell as well as the usual (excellent) suspects from Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and Dashiell Hammett.
The new design looks sleek and classy, but it’s what’s inside the covers that’s the selling point. Each reissue bears a very brief intro from novelist James Ellroy that feature his distinctive rat-a-tat patter about the cops, crimes and cronies within. Whether you need a new edition or not, this is good stuff.
And best of all? Included in the new releases is MacDonald’s 1964 novel “The Chill,” the next Lew Archer mystery following the above-mentioned “Hearse” and part of a four-book run that Ellroy calls, “the hottest hot streak in detective fiction history.”
It’d be a crime to ignore a tip like that.
Got any more intel for me? Send it to epedersen@scng.com and it might appear in the column.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
• • •
There are no guilty pleasures, says Billie Bloebaum. Read what you love.
Love books. (Getty Images)
Billie Bloebaum is the founder of Bookstore Romance Day, which arrives this year on Aug. 20, and she responded to the Q&A with some thoughtful comments on books she loves, reading across genres and why there’s not such thing as a guilty pleasure.
Q. Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?
“Bet Me” by Jennifer Crusie, which was the first Romance novel I read with a curvy heroine who was childless by choice and whose love interest loved her because of both of those things, not in spite of them. “The House in the Cerulean Sea” by TJ Klune, which was like a warm hug during the height of the pandemic, when I needed it most.
Q. What are you reading now?
I just finished “The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches” by Sangu Mandanna (out August 23) and am currently listening to the audiobook of “Not Quite a Husband” by Sherry Thomas.
Q. How do you decide what to read next?
Sometimes I ask for recommendations; sometimes it’s because I promised a blurb/review; sometimes it’s just what I think I’m in the mood for. In other words, there’s really no rhyme nor reason to choosing my next book.
Q. Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?
I’m going to say “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” It may not have been the first, but it is the one that has had the longest-lasting impact; it still influences my reading to this day.
Q. Is there a book you’re nervous to read?
Not since I really embraced the idea that I am not obligated to read anything; that I can choose not to finish any book that is not giving me joy in some way.
Q. Can you recall a book you thought could have been written just for you (or conversely, one that most definitely wasn’t)?
There are books that I’ve read at the right time in my life, but nothing that I really remember feeling, “This author saw into my soul and wrote this book just for me.” There are any number of books that are not for me, and that’s as it should be. There’s a book for every reader and a reader for every book, but that doesn’t mean that every book is for every reader.
Q. What’s something – a fact, a bit of dialogue or something else – that stayed with you from a recent reading?
There were several from “The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches,” but this one, reading it at this point in history, really stuck with me: “Mika felt absolutely no resentment at the likelihood that she wouldn’t have existed if her mother had had a choice in the matter. She was very glad she was alive, of course, but she also wished her mother had had a choice. Everyone deserved a choice.”
Q. Do you have any favorite book covers?
Not really. There are covers that are gorgeous but that don’t work for the story within their pages and covers that are just okay when viewed alone, but really become amazing when one realizes how perfectly they capture the book, either plot points or characters or tone or feeling. And there are covers that I love because they were replaced by something that is less reflective of my experience of the book. (The “Bet Me” mass market cover with the blue sky and shoes or the cover of Adriana Herrera’s “American Love Story” with its cover model who simply exudes joy. Both covers are still in use for the audiobooks.)
Q. Do you listen to audiobooks? If so, are there any titles or narrators you’d recommend?
I listen to audiobooks as much as I read print. I have so many narrators I love –Julia Whelan, Moira Quirk, January LaVoy, Emily Woo Zeller, Justine Eyre, Mary Jane Wells, Billie Fulford-Brown, Kim Staunton (who does most of Beverly Jenkins’s Historical Romance), and several more – and I’ve been known to choose an audiobook just because it has a narrator I love.
Q. Is there a genre or type of book you read the most – and what would you like to read more of? I mostly read romance and fantasy and science fiction. The one thing I would love to see more of – or any of – is historical romance by and about QPOC (queer people of color).
Q. Do you have a favorite book or books?
See above re: “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” but the other books on my list of books that I always have a copy of and that I read whenever I’m in a reading slump because I know they’ll bring me out are (in no particular order): “Redshirts” by John Scalzi, “Fire and Hemlock” by Diana Wynne Jones, “The Princess Bride” by William Goldman, “Bet Me” by Jennifer Crusie, “Sunshine” by Robin McKinley, “Boyfriend Material” by Alexis Hall, “Good Omens” by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, “Silver Angel” by Johanna Lindsey (which I would not recommend. It is an older romance novel and highly problematic, but it’s a comfort read for me.)
Q. Which books do you plan, or hope, to read next?
Next on the reading list is “Ten Thousand Stitches” by Olivia Atwater and I’m currently finishing up listening to “Not Quite a Husband” by Sherry Thomas, which is a re-read.
Q. Is there a person who made an impact on your reading life – a teacher, a parent, a librarian or someone else?
My mom, who let me read whatever I wanted and took my brother and I to the library regularly. I’ve always been surrounded by books, for as long as I can remember and still have several of my childhood favorites on my shelves, with all their stains and dings and crayonings.
Q. What do you find the most appealing about a book: the plot, the language, the cover, a recommendation? Do you have any examples?
I am an emotional reader – I want a book to make me feel things, and feel them deeply. There are hugely successful, award-winning novels that I can appreciate for their technical prowess, but that didn’t work for me because they didn’t make me feel anything. But I also want to feel those things organically, not feel like I was manipulated into them like with a Disney film. I don’t even really care what the feeling is. There are books where the primary feeling I got from them was “What the f*** did I just read?” and that’s as valid, important, impressive to me as a book that makes me swoon or laugh or cry.
Q. What’s a memorable book experience – good or bad – you’re willing to share?
My most memorable book experiences tend to be the books I’ve hate-read, so I won’t share titles because those books may be someone else’s favorites, but there are books where the plot is ludicrous or a character does something I feel is unforgivable but is forgiven without doing the hard work to earn it or – and this is a big one for me – the “miracle” baby that solves all of the problems in a romantic relationship.
Q. If you could ask readers something, what would it be?
I wouldn’t necessarily ask readers anything, but I would tell them to abandon the idea of a “guilty pleasure.” Too often, readers diminish or laugh off their choice to read genre fiction – be it romance or fantasy or science fiction or mystery or graphic novels (a format, not a genre, but it faces the same issues) – and there’s no reason. Read what you love. Read what brings you joy. As long as what you’re reading isn’t harming society (or encouraging you to do so), it’s good and valid and you shouldn’t have to be ashamed or feel like you need to hide or apologize. Read what makes you happy, whatever that may be. The most important thing is to read.
• • •
Anthony Marra’s latest novel is “Mercury Pictures Presents.” (Photo credit: Paul Duda / Courtesy of Hogarth)
Hollywood at war
Anthony Marra’s “Mercury Pictures Presents” explores ’40s-era LA and fascist Italy. READ MORE
Nick of time
TV star Jennette McCurdy addresses trauma in “I’m Glad My Mom Died” memoir. READ MORE
Author Michael Goldberg (left) and guitarist James Calvin Wilsey are seen in in the early ’90s (Courtesy Michael Goldberg)
Saddest song
“Wicked Game” tells the real-life story of a rock star’s downfall. READ MORE
“Bad City: Peril and Power in the City of Angels” by journalist Paul Pringle is the top-selling nonfiction release at Southern California’s independent bookstores. (Courtesy of Celadon Books)
The week’s bestsellers
The top-selling books at your local independent bookstores. READ MORE
• • •
Bookish.
What’s next on ‘Bookish’
Sign up for the next free Bookish event coming August 19 with guests A.J. Jacobs, Jerry Stahl and Laura Chinn joining host Sandra Tsing Loh.
Sign up for The Book Pages
Miss last week’s newsletter? Find past editions here
Dive into all of our books coverage