I realized that three of the books that our LICL book group read this past year take place in bookstores: \u201cThe Education of Harriet Hatfield<\/a>,\u201d by May Sarton, is about a bookseller, Harriet, who runs a women’s bookstore in Cambridge. \u201cHow to Read a Book,<\/a>\u201d by Monica Wood, takes place partly in a bookstore that is much like our beloved Longfellow Books in Portland. The main character in \u201cThe Sentence<\/a>,\u201d by Louise Erdrich, Tookie, works in an indigenous bookstore in Minneapolis, which is based on Erdrich\u2019s own bookstore, Birchbark Books<\/a> (and, in fact, Louise is a minor character in the book).<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Bookshop<\/a>,\u201d by Penelope Fitzgerald, is a classic (originally published in 1978) in the genre. Perusing titles in Minerva, the statewide book catalog for libraries, brings up fun titles such as \u201cMurder in an Irish Bookshop<\/a>,\u201d \u201cThe Bookshop of Dust and Dreams<\/a>,\u201d and \u201cHow to Find Love in a Bookshop<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n These site bring more suggestions for novels to read that take place in a bookstore:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Electric literature<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Bookriot<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n And for those of you into semantics, I had to look up the difference between bookstore and bookshop \u2013 in British English, bookshop is more commonly used. And the correct spelling for bookstore is one word, not two (I tend to interchange them, so good to know!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n What are some of your favorite novels that take place in bookstores?<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It recently occurred to me that there seems to be a growing trend to feature bookstores in novels. I recently read two similar titles, \u201cThe Stationery Shop,\u201d by Marjan Kamali, and \u201cThe Lost Bookshop,\u201d by Evie Woods, which are about bookstores (well, technically the stationery shop is a stationery shop with books, but books play … Continue reading Bookstores in novels<\/span> ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/liclblog.townoflongisland.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Hello-hello-books-in-Rockland.jpg\")
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