Florida Bookstore Day will be held this November

The celebration echoes California Bookstore Day, which was held for the first time this past May.

|
Ann Hermes
Bestsellers are featured at The Book Cellar, an independent bookstore in Lincoln Square in Chicago, Illinois.

Another state will be celebrating its bookstores this fall.

The first Florida Bookstore Day will be held this November, according to Tampa Bay-based news outlet 83 Degrees Media. Tiffany Razzano, who is in charge of the group Wordier Than Thou that organizes a literary magazine, a radio show, and open mic events for writers, came up with the idea. She had seen a sign for Record Store Day, wondered why there wasn’t a corresponding day for books, and found California Bookstore Day, which was held this past May, online. Chicago also held a day honoring its bookstores last month.

“I wanted to do something big," Razzano told 83 Degrees Media. "It’s a celebration of independent bookstores and the writing community.” 

Those behind Florida Bookstore Day are also looking for artists to create posters illustrating five famous books based in Florida. These will be “The Yearling” by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, “Florida Roadkill” by Tim Dorsey, “A Land Remembered” by Patrick D. Smith, and “Swamplandia!” by Karen Russell.

According to the website for Florida Bookstore Day, many bookstores have already signed up, including Wilson’s Book World of St. Petersburg, Inkwood Books of Tampa, Bookmark It of Orlando, Santa Rosa Beach’s Sundog Books, and Pensacola’s Hawsey’s Book Index. 

Florida Bookstore Day will be held on Nov. 15.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Florida Bookstore Day will be held this November
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2014/0812/Florida-Bookstore-Day-will-be-held-this-November
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe