The joy of browsing (and why bookstores still matter)

As I write this, we just wrapped up the wildly impulsive pseudo holiday of – you guessed it – Amazon Prime Days. I did not let this event pass me by. I have a kid entering college next year and those XL twin sheets aren’t going to buy themselves.

Normally I would have been happy for the excuse to toss a few teensy little books into my order, but this year was different. This is the year of Juliet Books, and our very first book order (like literally thousands of books) was delivered to the shop recently. That means we’ve been spending our spare time handling every single one of them.

The joy. I can’t even tell you.

If you’re a fan of bookstores, you don’t need me to describe what it’s like to spend a day wandering around shelves, pulling titles down to gaze at the covers, the embossed letters, the sprayed edges. I usually know exactly what I’m looking for because I haunt “new release day” posts on Instagram like it’s my job — but seeing those beauties live and in-person is truly something else, isn’t it?

We’ve said from the beginning that we want Juliet Books to be an experience. And yes, I just stepped directly onto a cliché and should be a better writer than that. But it’s true. Our shop has character (and that’s not a book joke…at least not intentionally). The lighting is cozy. The colors are gorgeous. And I don’t want to spoil any surprises, but there are a few details that will stop you in your tracks. It’s the perfect place to run your fingers over rows and rows of novels and memoirs and coffee table tomes. Of course we’ll have plenty of suggestions for you. But we also want you to find something that catches your eye when you’re least expecting it, because those moments – the ones you can only have in a bookstore – are absolutely thrilling.