Mary Pols, author of Accidentally on Purpose, recently blogged for Powells.com about independent bookstores — in particular, one that's (ahem) near and dear to our own hearts.

June 24, 2008:
Pricing Book Lust Versus Bookstore Love

Going on book tour means a lot of time dropping by the mega-chains to sign stock, all of them a blur of sameness, cavernous spaces where books seem almost like afterthoughts to the business of selling lattes, magazines, and movies we've already seen.

But I've also been to many independent stores, among them the legends like Book Soup in Los Angeles and the sweet upstarts, like the charming Queen Anne Books in Seattle. In these places, I explored rather than searched, and felt myself growing almost physically rounder as I did so, filling with possibilities for the mind.

Always, though, there were reminders of the realities of the business. I spent more than an hour in the magnificent children's section at Seattle's Elliott Bay Books, half listening to a grandmother reading books to her granddaughter. Based on their clothing and the woman's cell phone discussions of dinner reservations, they were far from a poor family. But as they were leaving, the girl asked if they could buy one of the books. "I'll get it somewhere else," the grandmother told her. "Somewhere cheaper." She's the kind of shopper who came to mind a few hours later when I heard that Cody's Books, one of the most important independent bookstores in the Bay Area — where I live — was closing its doors for good after 52 years in the business.

Visiting Powell's this morning was a welcome tonic, then. It's the granddaddy and grandson of them all in a way: a place so thriving and sprawling it seems it has to have a future. I joined throngs of happily dazed shoppers who looked as if they were touring a Louvre where they were allowed, for a small fee, to take home the art.

Read more of Pols's post — plus daily guest bloggers and Book News, Read It Before They Screen It, and more — on our blog!

Fup raced back along the path, same way she'd come from the park.

Until, wait: Why was she running? What purpose could running possibly serve? She hated herself for running but didn't break stride. One yard and another, blurs. Had anyone followed her? Bear or Bandit or Wiggums, were they trailing?

She leapt onto a familiar woodpile but stopped there in haste, lost purchase on a wad of kindling and rammed her shoulder into the side of the shed. The shed door — someone had left it open, she'd seen it.

Go in there and think. Collect yourself!

She dove in.

Kit shrieked. The Lab from the park exploded with barks. Fup almost had a heart attack, and then nearly got trampled under his flailing paws. Kit and the Lab from the park? Garden tools leapt off walls, an overturned shelf sent ceramic pots tumbling to the floor.

Inside their house, meanwhile, behind sliding glass and several yards removed, the Twibels didn't hear the crash, Don and Becky leaning on their kids' shoulders, Dad behind son and Mom behind daughter.

"Tableau," Becky mumbled.

Bandit on the deck, Bear on the gravel, Wiggums by the edge of the woods, and Lisa by her parked car: all of them turned toward the noise.