Bookstores
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The Bold Italic’s 2020 Awards
So many bookshops in the city hustled hard this year
This article is part of The Bold Italic’s 2020 Awards, which celebrate the Bay Area’s small businesses and local residents who have hustled and shown creativity throughout 2020. See all the award winners here.
Local bookstores have been some of the hardest-hit businesses of the pandemic. Here in San Francisco, the community has stepped up to help them through by ordering books locally instead of from Amazon and even contributing to GoFundMe campaigns to keep their doors open.
With so many incredible bookshops in the Bay, it seems impossible to choose the “best” one. …
Close your Amazon tab and help these local businesses
Winter is finally approaching, making the idea of cozying up with some hot chocolate and a great read sound enticing. Knowing that there’s no better company than a good book, make your shopping habits more ethical by supporting independent bookstores and authors during the gift-giving season.
The independent and local bookstores listed below can help you find the perfect read for that special someone or put you into a blissful state of relaxation through the escape that books bring.
This holiday season, local businesses need your help more than ever. The value of independent bookstores is undeniable, and many have…
From the history of Japanese internment to “Crazy Rich Asians,” all in a tiny corner of San Mateo
The story begins on the bookshelves. Volumes of Chinese American author Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior sit next to iconic works by Korean American novelist Chang-Rae Lee, which are crammed alongside books by Indian author Arundhati Roy. The newer additions, marked by their glossy jackets, lie horizontally across the tops of shelved literature, like the uber-popular Little Fires Everywhere and Crazy Rich Asians. Across the store, a wide smattering of others include picture books in Khmer, Tongan historical publications and a cookbook devoted solely to Spam.
Within this humble store in San Mateo, called the Asian American Curriculum Project…
FRIDAY FIVE
Literary greats that never disappoint
Litquake Festival, which is taking place in SF this week, is a great time to reflect on the city’s literary roots. Before it became a hub for tech robber barons, this city of ours was home to some of the country’s most prolific and exciting writers.
For the record, SF still serves as an address for many amazing scribes, but in its artistic prime, the literary world here was a main draw. Most famously, Jack Kerouac called North Beach home in the late 1940s; Allen Ginsberg lived in the Haight in the ’60s; and Hunter S. …
By Alison Stevenson
I moved back to my home city of Los Angeles around three years ago. I was living in the Bay Area before this, and I find myself still frequenting the Bay. I take that Megabus up north at least once a month. Not only do I have family up north and want to keep performing at the places I started doing stand-up comedy, I also just plain miss it up there.
I really dreaded moving back to Los Angeles. I expected the worst. I had never experienced the city as an adult, so my impression of what it would be…
The Bold Italic
Celebrating the free-wheeling spirit of the Bay Area — one sentence at a time.
