Bookstore Romance Day this Saturday 🥰

This Saturday, August 9th, is Bookstore Romance Day: a day designed to give independent bookstores an opportunity to celebrate Romance fiction—its books, readers, and writers—and to strengthen the relationship between bookstores and the Romance community. The first Bookstore Romance Day was 7 years ago and every year the day and the genre grow more popular. We love listening to Romance novels on road trips or reading them aloud to each other. Very cute.

To celebrate, we’re having a sale! Get 10% off Romance novels and Romance-adjacent goodies from our online shop this Friday, August 8 through Sunday, August 10. All orders will be shipped (for our distant book buds) or delivered (for our local book buds) on Monday 8/11. Use code BOOKLOVE10 at checkout for 10% off.

For our audiobook loving buds, Libro.fm has you covered. They’re having a huge sale on Romance audiobooks starting TODAY through August 20th, some titles are free August 9-10. Every purchase from Libro.fm directly supports indie bookstores like us.

Trans History Month 🏳️‍⚧️

August is Trans History Month, when we honor the rich history and contributions of transgender history makers, pioneers, and trailblazers, and affirms the ongoing presence of transgender people around the world. Whether you identify as trans or not, we invite you to take some time this month to learn about the rich history of the trans community (spoiler alert: we aren’t new! we’ve always been here!), including our joy, our resilience, and our activism. If you don’t love reading non-fiction, I recommend historical fiction novels like The Lilac People by Milo Todd. Now’s a great time to fact check the misinformation you’ve been reading on the internet. Yes, even from “the paper of record” The New York Times and that gay politician you thought you loved!

We created this handy dandy list of books on trans and queer history (mostly trans) on Bookshop.org to make it easy for you. Have you read any other books on transgender history you loved? We’d love to hear about them!

Meet Our Makers

Our commitment to featuring the voices & stories of historically marginalized communities extends to the makers we carry in our shop. Today, we want to introduce you to Zoe Frost of @junebuganddarlin, the creative brain behind the subversive stitch kits we offer. She is the heart, hands, and creative force behind Junebug & Darlin, a queer owned brand based in Portland, OR. When she’s not crafting, you’ll find her adventuring through the Pacific Northwest’s pine trees, ferns, and rivers with her partner and a dog or two.

Junebug & Darlin specializes in subversive cross stitch kits, providing all the tools to make an heirloom quality craft. Zoe’s artistic journey is deeply rooted in her love for nature, queerness, and a fierce “fuck the system” attitude, which she channels into every cross-stitch kit she creates. Her kits make great gifts and pair perfectly with an audiobook.

August Event Updates ❤️

• [Newly Added] Park Reading Hours - Thursday, August 28th @ 7pm | Clinton Park

  • You know the drill, pals: bring a book, something to sit on, snacks or bevies if you’d like. We’ll be gathering for another cozy night of reading in the park together.

• [Stay Tuned] Audiobook Walk - We’re still finalizing the details, but we’re planning an audiobook walk this month. Probably on a weekend morning. We will meet up, connect, and listen to audiobooks (or chat about audiobooks we’ve been enjoying) as we take a gentle stroll around the neighborhood.

• My (Zo) birthday is August 19th, so we’ll do something to celebrate me surviving another journey around the sun - stay tuned!

Shop Online - Anytime, Anywhere!

• Shop our curated selection of books (+ more!) directly through our website. We offer free bike delivery within a reasonable distance of us in Portland and we ship nationwide!

• Find your next audiobook through our shop on libro.fm, where you can choose your titles a la carte or sign up for a monthly membership. Either way, there’s never a holds line 😉 and libro.fm shares proceeds with us and other independent booksellers.

• Buy books & ebooks from our shop at bookshop.org. If you want something we don’t have in stock, head to our Bookshop page and order from there. Bookshop.org lovingly shares 30% of each sale with us, making it more viable for indie bookstores to stand up against the big bad wolves (aka: Amazon and B&N). I’m personally excited about the lists we made for sports fans and Oregon Battle of the Books (3-5 | 6-8 | 9-12).