It’s the most wonderful time of the year. As shopping holidays go, I’ll take the springtime cluster of independent brick and mortar celebrations over Christmas in a heartbeat. Saturday is my favorite of the bunch, Independent Bookstore Day. Here in Seattle, Independent Bookstore Day is more than just a day-long party celebrating local bookstores. It’s a challenge. Stamp your bookstore passport at each stop, and if you fill your book by closing time, you get 25% off for the rest of the year at every participating bookstore. There are 23 of them.

The Challenge

The “Seattle” part of Seattle Independent Bookstore Day is loosely defined. Among the 23 participating bookstores are shops on Bainbridge, in Tacoma, Redmond, and Edmonds. To fit them all in, you have to strategize ferry schedules and opening hours, and you can’t spend too long at each store. But it’s not impossible. Some of the stores have multiple locations, and you only have to get your passport stamped at one of them. Last year, 320 Grand Champions visited 19 stores from Poulsbo to Kirkland in a single day.

My Approach

Someday I’m going to do the whole challenge. But with two kids, it’s too much work. Plus, I like to thoroughly explore each store that I visit. The first year I did Bookstore Day, I only realized what day it was in the morning. So we started with the closest bookstore to my house that we’d never been to before and worked our way out until we ran out of time and energy. We spent as long as we wanted at each store, and each got to buy one book at each store. Sometimes we didn’t stick to our limits.

Last year we prioritized all the stores in the Seattle city limits that we hadn’t been to yet, but we also stopped at some favorites if they were convenient to our route. We followed the same shopping rules. Sometimes we didn’t stick to our limits.

We have discovered some new favorite bookstores this way. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that specialty stores were surprisingly fun. It’s hard to make it in the bookstore business, so if you only sell poetry or science, you’ve got to be amazing. We fell in love with Open Books, and Ada’s Technical Books has become a regular stop for us.

This Year

Alas, this year I cannot justify the spending inherent in our old approach. And I know that I cannot refrain from buying tons of books if I visit lots of bookstores. This year, Christmas Bookstore Day is cancelled. But the spirit of Christmas Bookstore Day lives on year-round. On Saturday, I’m allowing myself one bookstore. My daughter has a lesson in Shoreline, and I plan to keep driving north to the Edmonds Bookshop. Then I plan to dedicate the afternoon to reading some of the spoils of Bookstore Days past that I still haven’t gotten around to (I’m looking at you Lab Girl).

I’m going to hang onto the map (designed by Stephen Crowe at Third Place Books). My goal is to make it to all 23 bookstores before the next Bookstore Day. As always, I’m going to prioritize the bookstores I’ve never been to before, which means this year, I have to get out of town. I’ve only been to Poulsbo once in my life, so Liberty Bay Books deserves its own daytrip. Right?

What about you? I’d love to hear which bookstores you visit (local or not) and of course, which books you buy, in the comments. Otherwise, I’ll just follow along #SEABookstoreDay.