Masked Up and Making the Race

This last Saturday, I participated in my fourth Seattle Independent Bookstore Day celebration. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the expectations in 2021 were quite different from what they’d been previously. In 2019, for instance, the goal was to visit 21 out of 26 participating indie shops in a single day; this time, rules called for us simply to purchase at least one item in 10 different stores over a 10-day period. Nonetheless, sticking with tradition, my cohorts for this 2021 event—my delightful niece Amie-June (who has accompanied me on two previous SIBDs) and her precocious 5-year-old son, Gareth—agreed to try hitting all 10 book retailers on Saturday alone.

(Left) Amie-June, Gareth, and yours truly at Bainbridge Island’s Eagle Harbor Book Company.

We began the run at 8 a.m., traveled by both car and ferry in a circle around the city (with a couple of necessary detours to cover bookstores that closed earlier than others), and finished 10 hours later at the Elliott Bay Book Company, in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Given that we had only 10 bookstores to cover, we tried to spend some quality time in each, buying items for ourselves or others. Gareth made the biggest haul, with his book-nerd mother and I both adding to his reading stock. I had brought along a short list of things I hoped to find for myself—both crime fiction and non-fiction works—but couldn’t locate most of them, and wound up with only two books: Laurence Bergreen’s In Search of a Kingdom: Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire and Ride the Devil’s Herd: Wyatt Earp’s Epic Battle Against the West’s Biggest Outlaw Gang, by John Boessenecker.

In the past, people who complete the SIBD challenge have won 25-percent discounts for a year at all participating bookshops. This time, the prize is considerably less significant—a limited-edition Seattle Indie Bookstore Day 2021 tote bag—but the fun, as usual, was in making the race and getting to boast about it for the next 365 days, until we are invited to saddle up all over again.

READ MORE: “Bookstore Mysteries: Independent Bookstore Day,” by Janet Rudolph (Mystery Fanfare).

Odds and Ends

• Although it might be easy to overlook, today is Independent Bookstore Day. In previous years, this occasion has brought out tens of thousands of readers, all willing to race between independent book retailers in record time. (You can read my recaps of some such mad dashes here, here, and here.) But, due to the continuing—and continually devastating—COVID-19 pandemic (180,000 people dead in the United States, and Trump still won’t develop a national plan for dealing with this crisis!), the 2020 celebration was first postponed from April 25 to today, August 29, and has since turned into a primarily virtual celebration. However, as B.V. Lawson of In Reference to Murder reminds us, there are limited in-store events around the United States. And even if it’s unsafe to visit two dozen or so shops today, you can still patronize one or two, picking up fresh reading material and supporting these immensely valuable businesses, many of which have seen significant drops in sales this year. Or go online to order. Click here to find a list of participating retailers; search for your local stores by zip code.

• While we’re on the subject of indies, Portland, Oregon’s wonderful Powell’s Books (which has also been hit hard by the pandemic) has announced that it will no longer sell its wares via Amazon. “For too long,” says owner Emily Powell, “we have watched the detrimental impact of Amazon’s business on our communities and the independent bookselling world. We understand that in many communities, Amazon—and big box retail chains—have become the only option. And yet when it comes to our local community and the community of independent bookstores around the U.S., we must take a stand. The vitality of our neighbors and neighborhoods depends on the ability of local businesses to thrive. We will not participate in undermining that vitality.” Of course, you can still purchase new and used works from the Powell’s Web site.

• In Reference to Murder alerts us as well to the coming “virtual Bloody Scotland writing festival on September 18, available with free registration. Features include a panel on Pitching Your Story; Jeffery Deaver—My Life in Crime; The Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers—Behind the Scenes; and The McIlvanney Prize and Debut Prize announcement. Organizers also recently announced that the entire Bloody Scotland crime fest (running September 17-30) will be available for free online, including events with special guests Lee Child and Ian Rankin.”

• George Roy Hill’s 1973 con-man film, The Sting, placed 12th in Otto Penzler’s recent assessment of “The Greatest Crime Films of All Time.” But CrimeReads staff writer Olivia Rutigliano gives that Oscar-winning Paul Newman/Robert Redford vehicle star treatment in this new piece, which applauds its storyline as “a perfect crystal of a premise—clean and neat despite the multitude of facets that it will turn over as it rolls along.” She adds:

In my opinion, The Sting’s particular kind of endless narrative-unfurling has never been topped by another movie—but The Sting is also fascinating for how many layers of performance it dons, as it progresses. The movie is often discussed in terms of its flawless headlining, a pairing between Newman and Redford that is even more fun and fulfilling than its counterpart in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (which, despite the joys of its big-time good-guy-burglaries, scenic chase scenes, and bicycle riding interludes, is bound to a historical accuracy that can’t provide the triumphant ending we crave for our heroes). Indeed, for us, the audience, much of the massive appeal of The Sting is specifically dependent on the performative togetherness of Newman and Redford—the presentation that they’re two halves of a friendly, repeatable routine. They are one of Hollywood’s greatest duos, greatest double-acts.

All of which reminds me that during last year’s Independent Bookstore Day, I found the paperback movie tie-in treatment of The Sting, written by Robert Weverka. It’s still sitting in a pile on my desk. Might it at last be time to crack that baby open?

• I read Elmore Leonard’s Unknown Man #89 (1977) back in college, which was more than a few coon’s ages ago. So it’s good to have my memory of the tale refreshed by this review in Mystery Tribune. Author Nev March says the book “gets more than passing grades—it reveals the quandary of a ‘regular guy,’ a sometime scamp, coming to terms with what he can and cannot stomach in the world around him. It lays bare the arguments that an alcoholic wields to persuade himself, with honesty that can only come from the pain of experience. Although lesser known than Leonard’s bestsellers Raylan, Tishomingo Blues, Be Cool, Get Shorty, and Rum Punch, the novel Unknown Man #89 is a tale of action, deduction, and soul-searching choices.”

• Finally, I have some sad news to impart: Sixty-five-year-old author Paul Green—who has penned biographies of Roy Huggins, Pete Duel, and Jeffrey Hunter, and has also produced books about “weird detectives” and television’s The Virginian—confided recently on Facebook that he has entered hospice care. He tells me, “I suffer from stage 4 prostate cancer that has spread to my bones. I have been under treatment for three years.” According to a biographical note on Amazon, Green “began his professional career as an artist for World Distributors, DC and Marvel UK, Egmont and Whitman on such titles as Doctor Who, Star Trek, Alias Smith and Jones, Masters of the Universe, Scooby-Doo, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Spider-Man.” Born in Lincoln, England, he currently resides in Rustburg, Virginia. A kind, hopeful thought or two for Paul would not go amiss.

Bullet Points: Housebound Edition

This was inevitable: Last Monday, Washington Governor Jay Inslee—responding to growing numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the Evergreen State—issued a stay-at-home directive that required all “non-essential businesses” here to close by Wednesday evening, and all state residents to remain inside “except for absolutely necessary activities, such as restocking essential supplies or accessing vital public services.” The order is supposed to “stay in effect for at least two weeks,” though the end date could be pushed back further, depending on the success of efforts to stem the virus’ spread. (Inslee, like most U.S. governors, rejects Donald Trump’s arbitrary suggestion that people should head back to work by Easter.)

All of this means I’m currently enjoying an unplanned vacation from work at the independent Seattle neighborhood bookshop where I have been helping out for the last year. Fortunately, I have plenty of writing to keep me busy, plus a stack of reading material for entertainment. Included in that soaring assortment are Harry Dolan’s The Good Killer, Max Allan Collins’ Do No Harm, William Boyle’s City of Margins, Peter Robinson’s Many Rivers to Cross, advance copies of Cara Black’s Three Hours in Paris and Ian McGuire’s The Abstainer, and a couple of non-fiction releases: Kate Winkler Dawson’s American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI (I loved her 2017 book, Death in the Air) and Sam Wasson’s The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood. Should I require an interlude between books, I have at the ready complete DVD collections of Dan August, Longstreet and Peter Gunn, plus an unsuccessful Raymond Burr pilot film from 1975, Mallory: Circumstantial Evidence, that I picked up from Modcinema. So I am unlikely to become bored, even if—as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warns—this quarantine lasts longer than any of us would prefer.

In a pinch, I can always surf the Web, as I did recently for new stories related to crime fiction. Below are some of my finds.

• “While most of us today are not sick,” writes CrimeReads senior editor Molly Odintz,” we are stuck at home, and perhaps now is the time to rediscover the lengthy novel.” Specifically, the lengthy crime or thriller novel. Odintz recommends 14 “long-ass books” (exceeding 500 pages) to try, among them James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential (512 pages), Hideo Yokoyama’s Six Four (576), Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (576), and John le Carré’s The Honourable Schoolboy (606). Let me propose these eight additional candidates:

— By Gaslight, by Steven Price (730 pages)
— The Death of the Detective, by Mark Smith (608)
— Prussian Blue, by Philip Kerr (544)
— The Twenty-Year Death, by Ariel S. Winter (700)
— The Price of Butcher’s Meat, by Reginald Hill (528)
— The Meaning of Night, by Michael Cox (720)
— The Company, by Robert Littell (896)
— Lamentation, by C.J. Sansom (656)

What about you? Are there excellent extended works of crime and mystery fiction that you think the rest of us should consider tackling as we wait out our mass-seclusion? Feel free to mention them in the Comments section at the end of this post.

• Plans to demolish a residence in Beaconsfield, England, once owned by G.K. Chesterton, author of the Father Brown mysteries, have been “thrown out by the local council,” reports the Catholic Herald. “South Bucks District Council dismissed proposals by Octagon Developments to demolish the house, called ‘Overroads,’ … and replace it with a block of nine apartments. Planning officers concluded that the size and the scale of the proposed flats would make them ‘intrusive’ and incompatible with the character of the area. Further, they would ‘adversely impact’ upon Top Meadow, the Grade II-listed home that also once belonged to Chesterton, which directly faces Overroads.” This may not ensure the home’s survival, however. As the Herald says: “Given that Overroads is not listed [as a historical site], or otherwise protected, there is nothing to prevent Octagon from appealing against the decision or from other developers submitting alternative applications in the future.” (Hat tip to The Bunburyist.)

• To read about one couple’s pilgrimage to Overroads and other UK spots that were once significant to Chesterton, click here.

• It seems that some incorrect information about this year’s Whodunit Mystery Writing Contest, sponsored by Mystery Fest Key West, has been making the rounds. So let’s take it from the top: Even though this year’s Mystery Fest has been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, its annual writing competition will go on. All interested participants are instructed to “submit the first three pages (no more than 750 words) of a finished, unpublished manuscript” to whodunitaward@mysteryfestkeywest.com by Wednesday, April 15 (not by the 31st, as previously reported). “Attach your manuscript submission as a Word document and include the title, author name, and e-mail address in the header. Judging will be ‘blind.’ Finalists will be notified by May 1 and have until May 10 to submit full, never-before-published manuscripts.” Among the rewards awaiting the author of the victorious entry are publication of his or her work by Absolutely Amazing eBooks and free registration for the next Mystery Fest Key West. Any questions should be addressed to info@mysteryfestkeywest.com.

• Mystery Fanfare brings the sorrowful news that Kate Mattes, who once owned Kate’s Mystery Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts (it was closed in 2009), passed away on Wednesday at her home in Vermont. “It was a sudden cardiac event,” says her sister Emily McAdoo, “and she had been in poor health and getting weaker all along.” The Gumshoe Site says Mattes was 73 years old. A “memorial/reflection” for Mattes is said to be in the planning stages.

• R.I.P., Mark Halegua, a noted pulp-fiction collector and frequent attendee of pulp conventions. A Queens borough resident of New York City, Halegua died on March 18, at 66 years of age.

• I first visited The Mysterious Bookshop in the early 1980s, during my brief inaugural visit to New York City, and now make a point of shopping there whenever I am in Manhattan (which is never often enough). It’s a wonderful place, a palace of riches for crime-fiction lovers. I have always assumed it would be around forever, but this note from owner Otto Penzler, sent out on Monday, has me concerned:

If you don’t live in the New York area, you may not know that the governor has ordered the shutdown of all non-essential businesses. Although I regard bookstores as essential, we nonetheless closed our doors on Friday. Many of our customers showed tremendous loyalty and support in that week, for which I cannot thank you adequately. People in the city have been told to stay home, so we cannot be of service to you at this time.

Without any income, the store faces a serious existential crisis. If you have not been crushed by being laid off and are in a position to help, your continued support would be mightily welcome. Check our website and find some books that you’d like to have and order them online; it’s easy. We cannot send them until we’re allowed back in the store, but finding a big backlog of orders when we return would breathe life into the operation.

If you don’t want to choose a book right now, you can purchase a gift card, good for a future purchase.

Anything you are able to do would mean a lot to all of us. The rent here is brutal, as are such other expenses as insurance, utilities, taxes, and others too plentiful and boring to mention. They don’t stop just because we’re closed. Staff salaries—my greatest concern—will be covered, it seems, with several plans from the federal and state governments.

I admit to being a little uncomfortable asking for your help but, with the unavoidable prospect of seeing the store close forever, I am shamelessly looking to you to give us hope.

With the number of U.S. crime-fiction stores on the wane, we simply can’t afford to let a gem like The Mysterious Bookshop go out of business. So forget about Amazon; it’s already taken enough of your money. Go here, instead, to find your next memorable read.

• In a brief but heartwarming essay for Literary Hub, writer Bill Hayes remembers a rewarding walk he took last week amid the mostly shuttered retailers of Lower Manhattan, in quest of a new book.

• Do you really want to help a bookstore? Buy a gift card.

• Will virtual book events lead to virtual sales?

• I was not aware there were any crime novels set in the surprisingly-less-dangerous-than-it-used-to-be Colombian capital of Bogotá, much less excellent ones. But CrimeReads’ Paul French this week posted a survey of Bogotá-based yarns in English translation, ranging from Laura Restrepo’s Delirium (2008) and Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ Fruit of the Drunken Tree (2018) to Juan Gabriel Vasquez’s The Shape of the Ruins (2015). Is it possible our current quarantine will last long enough that I can try one or more of these?

• Another recent CrimeReads piece I enjoyed: Alix Lambert’s feature about Arnold Mesches, who served as courtroom sketch artist during some of the highest-profile trials of the last century.

• Are you missing the 1970s (presuming that you even lived through them)? Then revisit that era via these 16 notable works of crime fiction, set mostly in the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush I years.

• Foreword Reviews has announced the finalists for its 2019 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year awards. The two categories likely to be of greatest interest to Rap Sheet readers are these:

Best Mystery:
— Gumshoe Rock, by Rob Leininger (Oceanview)
— Moonscape, by Julie Weston (Five Star)
— The Suicide Sonata, by B.V. Lawson (Crimetime Press)
— A Plain Vanilla Murder, by Susan Wittig Albert (Persevero Press)
— Below the Fold, by R.G. Belsky (Oceanview)
— Boxing the Octopus, by Tim Maleeny (Poisoned Pen Press)
— In the Clutches of the Wicked, by David Carlson (Coffeetown Press)
— Survival Can Be Deadly, by Charlotte Stuart (Amphorae)
— This Will Destroy You, by Pedram Navab (Spuyten Duyvil)
— Treacherous Strand, by Andrea Carter (Oceanview)

Best Thriller/Suspense:
— Green Valley, by Louis Greenberg (Titan)
— Looking for Garbo, by Jon James Miller (Blank Slate Press)
— A Cross to Kill, by Andrew Huff (Kregel)
— Angel in the Fog, by T.J. Turner (Oceanview)
— High Stakes, by John F Dobbyn (Oceanview)
— Passport to Death, by Yigal Zur (Oceanview)
— Rag and Bone, by Joe Clifford (Oceanview)
— The Guilt We Carry, by Samuel W. Gailey (Oceanview)
— The Nine, by Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg (She Writes Press)
— The Unrepentant, by E.A. Aymar (Down & Out)

Per the Foreword Reviews Web site: “Winners in each genre—along with Editor’s Choice Prize winners and Foreword’s Independent Publisher of the Year—will be announced June 17, 2020.” (Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)

• This is too bad. From the NW Book Lovers blog: “Out of an abundance of caution and concern for everyone, this year’s Seattle Independent Bookstore Day, originally scheduled for April 25, has been postponed. August 29, 2020, a Saturday, is the tentative new date.” I first took part in this joyous race on behalf of reading back in 2016 (the event’s sophomore year), and have continued to participate ever since. Although delaying IBD because of the novel coronavirus scare is regrettable, the fact is that August usually brings better weather to Seattle than April does. So maybe this is good news?

• Happy 15th birthday to the UK site Crimesquad!

• In my last “Bullet Points” wrap-up, I mentioned that the 1978 TV film No Prince for My Cinderella, starring former Brady Bunch paterfamilias Robert Reed as a psychologist-cum-detective “who specializes in finding teen runaways,” can now be purchased in DVD format from Modcinema. What I didn’t know then, but that author Lee Goldberg has since informed me, is that No Prince for My Cinderella served as the pilot for Operation: Runaway, a Quinn Martin series that debuted in April 1978. Reed evidently starred in the initial three episodes. But, says Goldberg, he “was so difficult to work with that he was fired after the first season and replaced by Alan Feinstein,” who played Steve Arizzio, “former juvenile officer, now a clinical psychologist.” With Feinstein’s entry, the show became The Runaways, and lasted 13 more episodes, ending in September 1979. For the time being, at least, you can watch No Prince for My Cinderella on YouTube. The second series main title sequence is embedded below.



• As Wikipedia explains, in 1959 Vienna-born actor Kurt Kasznar and Quebec-born performer William Shatner (the latter then 28 years old, not yet famous for his role in Star Trek) were cast as Rex Stout characters Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin in the pilot for a prospective weekly series on CBS-TV, titled simply Nero Wolfe. “The pilot episode, ‘Count the Man Down,’ … was filmed in Manhattan in March 1959,” Wikipedia says. “The half-hour program concerned the mysterious death of a scientist during a guided missile launch at Cape Canaveral.” Plans were to slot Nero Wolfe into the CBS schedule at 10 p.m. on Mondays, beginning in September 1959. That didn’t happen. Why? The show “was considered too good to be confined to half an hour,” according to one critic. So it was scrapped. Only recently did that unsold pilot appear on YouTube. It’s quite fun, and it is impossible not to wonder, while viewing it, how different Shatner’s career might’ve been, had this Nero Wolfe been a success.

• Wired, a three-part British TV drama, passed me by when it was originally broadcast in 2008. However, this write-up in Mystery*File has me wanting to watch it while I’m cooped up inside. And I notice all three episodes are available on YouTube. See it while you can!

• I know Carolyn Weston as the author of Poor, Poor Ophelia, a 1972 procedural adapted as the pilot for ABC-TV’s The Streets of San Francisco (1972-1977). I didn’t remember that she, along with Jan Huckins, had also penned Face of My Assassin, a 1959 novel described as being “in the tradition of In the Heat of the Night and To Kill a Mockingbird.” A new paperback edition of their book was released this week by Cutting Edge, together with this plot synopsis:

It’s 1959. Matthew Scott is a widowed, alcoholic reporter from New York who seeks personal and professional redemption when he’s sent to the Deep South to write about a town that is defying a U.S. Supreme Court decision to integrate blacks into schools. His mere presence is a catalyst that ignites long-buried racial, political, religious, and personal conflicts among the residents, both white and black, ripping the town apart. Those tensions violently explode when Scott is falsely arrested by the bigoted, tyrannical sheriff for the rape and murder of an out-spoken black schoolteacher.

This is a stunning, shockingly vivid portrait of a dark time in America’s history, a tale of intolerance, bigotry and hope that's as relevant today as it was sixty years ago.

In addition, Cutting Edge recently re-released (for e-readers) Weston’s debut novel, 1956’s Tormented, ballyhooed as “a searing novel of erotic obsession.” Clearly, my previous conception of Weston’s range as an author was markedly too limited.

• In his blog, Max Allan Collins provides some useful background to Masquerade for Murder, the latest Mike Hammer novel he “co-authored” with the late Mickey Spillane.

• I don’t know where he finds the energy, but all this month Spanish blogger José Ignacio Escribano—the brains behind A Crime Is Afoot—has been posting mini-biographies (in English) of classic contributors to mystery fiction. Some of his subjects are still well recognized (Margaret Millar, Erle Stanley Gardner, Dorothy B. Hughes, Ellery Queen), while others are today far less familiar (J. Jefferson Farjeon, Francis Vivian, S.S. Van Dine, J.J. Connington, Dorothy Bowers). If you’d like to expand your knowledge of this field’s history, set aside some time to page through Escribano’s latest posts.

• Speaking of blog series, Paperback Warrior has been busily “unmasking” pseudonymous, obscure, but frequently prolific paperback authors of the 20th century in an irregular succession of posts. We’re talking about people such as “Jack Baynes” (aka Bertram Baynes Fowler), “James Marcott” (Duane Schermerhorn), and “James P. Cody” (Peter Thomas Rohrbach). Although not all of the entries in this series are properly labeled, most can be accessed here.

• Finally, do you, like so many others, have extra time on your hands lately? Why not use it to help librarians and archivists with their “digital detective work”?

Speeding Through Reading

I take a brief break with my veteran “Champion Challenge” partner and book-loving niece, Amie-June Brumble (right), to snap a selfie in front of Ada’s Technical Books, on Capitol Hill.

Yes, I know, it’s been more than two weeks since I celebrated Seattle Independent Bookstore Day (April 27). But what with a busy work schedule and various family commitments, it’s been hard until now to find enough free hours to compose a recap of my experiences.

As I mentioned in a previous post on this page, I had arranged to participate that day in the IBD’s annual “Champion Challenge” alongside my favorite niece, Amie-June Brumble, with whom I undertook this same venture two years ago. The goal of the Champion Challenge is for readers to visit a designated number of bookshops over the course of a business day, at each of which the contestant is supposed to collect a unique stamp on his or her official Passport Map. Everyone who finishes with a completed passport wins a 25 percent discount at all of those stores for the following year—a pretty favorable deal, if you go through a lot of books annually (as I do).

When I first joined in this frenzied competition, back in 2016—the second year it took place—the goal was to stop by at least 17 of the 21 participating indie stores. (For shops with more than one location on the map, you only needed to accumulate a single stamp.) That number jumped to 19 of 23 in 2017, and this year, Champion Challenge players had to pay calls on 21 out of the 26 stores taking part. People who didn’t want to engage in the full bookstore crawl could still be involved: those who visited three or more stores could turn in their passports for a 30-percent-off coupon, good for a onetime use at any of the shops joining in this adventure.

(Left) Cover of the IBD Passport Map.

Having undertaken the Champion Challenge before, Amie-June and I determined to follow our customary and successful route. This took us in a spiraling, clockwise path through the Seattle suburbs first, then north across downtown and the city’s northern neighborhoods, and had us finishing in the Capitol Hill district, east of downtown. Just as I have done before, I offer—below—my brief account of Seattle’s 2019 Independent Bookstore Day, recalled in statistics and incidents.

Time we started out: Amie-June picked me up in front of my house at the ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m. Since we had two additional bookstores to reach by day’s end, she wanted to catch the first (6:10) ferry departing downtown Seattle for Bainbridge Island, on the west side of Puget Sound, where a couple of shops—Eagle Harbor Book Company and The Traveler—sit across from one another on the main street of Winslow, Bainbridge’s town center. A coterie of women also embarking on this Champion Challenge boarded the ferry with us, and passed out fresh doughnuts to anyone who wished one, for as long as they lasted (not long enough)—a very friendly touch. We reached Winslow just before the two bookshops opened, at the unusual hour of 7 a.m. I was impressed by Eagle Harbor’s arrangements, which had visitors entering through one of its doors (where pre-stamped Passport Maps were available) and then exiting another, thus maintaining a comfortable flow. As would be our pattern throughout the day, Amie-June and I collected our necessary passport stamps and then spent a bit of time perusing the offerings at each business before moving on.

First books purchased: As might have been predicted, Amie-June began to satisfy her book hunger much earlier than yours truly. While at Liberty Bay Books in Poulsbo, on the west side of Puget Sound, she snapped up We Are the Gardeners, a children’s work by Joanna Gaines, as well as an adult novel titled Palisades Park, by Alan Brennert. I waited three more stops—until Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park—before purchasing Nature’s Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present, by Philipp Blom (Liveright).

Number of books purchased along the way: For myself, I picked up three: the aforementioned Nature’s Mutiny; Making Monte Carlo: A History of Speculation and Spectacle, by Mark Braude; and a 1974 novelization of the Paul Newman/Robert Redford film The Sting, by “Robert Weverka,” aka Robert McMahon. I didn’t know the last of those existed, nor was I looking for it; but BookTree in Kirkland, on the east side of Lake Washington, had a copy and I couldn’t resist, after having enjoyed other of Weverka’s TV and movie tie-in novels.

Number of books I really wanted to buy: A conservative estimate would be eight … or maybe 10 … OK, perhaps a dozen, or more. Among those I passed up (at least temporarily) were Tom Clavin’s latest biography, Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier's First Gunfighter (St. Martin’s Press); journalist-historian Jack Kelly’s The Edge of Anarchy: The Railroad Barons, the Gilded Age, and the Greatest Labor Uprising in America (St. Martin’s Press); and the recent re-release of Erle Stanley Gardner’s 1942 Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Careless Kitten (American Mystery Classics).

Number of books Amie-June purchased: Twelve—which she says was “fewer than I expected.” The last time we ran this Champion Challenge together, she acquired more than 30 books along the way. Back then, though, she was still stocking the Little Free Library outside her house. Now, several years into that project, she has teetering stacks of paperbacks still waiting to cycle in and out of her streetside athenaeum. The works she picked up this year were only for herself and her sweet, book-loving (of course) 3-year-old son.

Number of bookstores visited this year that I had never popped in to before: Only two—Arundel Books, a rather beautiful establishment in the historic Pioneer Square district, and Page 2 Books, a used-book-lovers’ mecca in Burien, a southern ’burb of Seattle.

Food ingested during our travels: With our too-early start, I found no time for breakfast. It wasn’t until we reached the small town of Kingston (no relation) and the terminal for our ferry ride back east across Puget Sound, that we stopped at a McDonald’s for Egg McMuffins—not my favorite repast, but when hunger strikes hard, high-minded disinclinations toward junk food go right out the window. Fortunately, we found finer fare around lunchtime at a sandwich shop called Homegrown, located right next to Island Books, on Mercer Island, just east of downtown Seattle. There were surprisingly fewer cookies and other quick treats available along our path this year, but we did pick up a few Oreo-style sweets at Magnolia’s Bookstore, in the Magnolia neighborhood, and some Jordan almonds at Phinney Books, in Greenwood. Oh, and let’s not forget the Starbucks mocha I bought about halfway through this trip.

First frustrating event of the day: We just barely missed catching the 8:40 a.m. ferry we’d hoped to take from Kingston back to Edmonds, north of Seattle. This meant we had to wait another hour for the next sailing. Oh, well, at least this gave us a chance to peacefully eat those Egg McMuffins.

(Right) The Passport Map’s checklist of participating stores. Click to enlarge.

Second frustrating event of the day: We finally found our way to Page 2 Books at about 2 p.m., only to encounter a small group of people who were already handing in their completed passports. What the hell? By then, we had accumulated only nine stamps! The only way to have finished this course so quickly, we surmised, was to have a designated driver along—one who wasn’t participating in the Challenge, and who could wait immediately outside each shop (perhaps in a loading zone) and then speed everyone on to the next destination—and to spend no more time in the bookstores than was absolutely required to have the passports stamped. Of course, that defeats one of the principal incentives the bookstores have in participating in this event, which is to introduce new customers to their bookshelf selections, invite them to buy a volume or two, and entice them to return again later. Those folks who finished the course so early missed out on the fun of browsing. And, really, why the rush? The first-place finisher in this event receives no more points or plaudits than the last-place finisher.

Stores in which we’d like to have spent some more time: Amie-June was quite impressed by the children’s reading selection at Island Books, so she’d have been happy to while away the afternoon there. I was sad that we had to dash in and out of Arundel Books so quickly (due to downtown parking shortages); I’ll have to go back sometime in the future to see more of what it calls its “eclectic stock” of previously owned and collectible editions. Another place I didn’t loiter long enough this year was Queen Anne Book Company, immediately north of downtown, which always boasts a thoughtfully curated selection of general works, and since our last visit has witnessed a major remodel of its next-door coffee shop. It would have been nice to spend some time in there reading from my new purchases.

Stores with the noticeably nicest salespeople: Liberty Bay Books; Edmonds Bookshop; Ada’s Technical Books, on Capitol Hill; and Phinney Books, in the Greenwood neighborhood.

Store I would like to have visited, but didn’t: Madison Books, which I recently had a small hand in launching in the Madison Park neighborhood. Because it’s owned by the same folks behind Phinney Books, it wasn’t necessary that we pay a call at Madison, and it would’ve been a bit out of our way. Yet Independent Bookstore Day was also that establishment’s opening day, so I’d like to have joined in the celebration, if only fleetingly.

Number of Jell-O shots ingested: Two, one for each of us at the Elliott Bay Book Company, the final stop on our daylong odyssey. In recent years, Elliott Bay (formerly located in Pioneer Square, but now on Capitol Hill) has served tequila shots to the many people who finish their Champion Challenge there. For some reason, however, the decision was made this time around to switch to Jell-O shots in various fruit flavors. I had the alcoholic variety, spiked with vodka; Amie-June, since she is currently pregnant with her second son, opted instead for the non-alcoholic version. In both cases, we had trouble sucking our finish-line treats out of their small plastic cups. Not quite as cheerful a conclusion to our journey as tequila shots would’ve been.

Lesson I learned successfully from the last two years: Take along a full water bottle. You might be surprised to discover how easily one can become dehydrated, speeding around town with the singular goal of gawking at more books than you can afford.

Number of hours spent on this year’s Champion Challenge: 14, which was an hour and a half longer than the last time Amie-June and I undertook the venture. But then, we did have two more stops to make.

Number of miles traveled: 13.4, not including the two ferry rides across Puget Sound. No wonder this endeavor is so time-consuming!

Despite the arduousness of this enterprise, I’m told that 636 people were as successful as Amie-June and I in finishing the Champion Challenge (up from 500 in 2018). Another 1,034 people are said to have visited at least three shops on Independent Bookstore Day. I’ll be able to see and meet many of them this coming Saturday, May 18, when Queen Anne Book Company hosts an all day (10 a.m.-5 p.m.) celebration for the finishers, during which they will receive either their Champion Cards or their discount coupons.

Book Nerds, Unite!

(Above) The 2019 Seattle Passport map of bookshops.

Should this page appear quiet tomorrow, it will be because I’m off participating in the week’s premier local literary event: the fifth annual Seattle Independent Bookstore Day. For those keeping track, this is the fourth consecutive year I have taken part in that all-day celebration of reading and retailing. The first occasion was back in 2016.

While many people will likely visit one or two shops, just to feel a part of things, tomorrow’s main feature will be the “Passport Challenge,” or “Champion Challenge.” It begins when you get your hands on a copy of the Passport bookstore map, available free of charge from any of the stores engaged in this contest. As Paul Constant explains in The Seattle Review of Books, the goal is to “pick up a passport stamp at every single participating bookstore in the Seattle area—that’s 26 bookstores, though you only have to visit one location for local chains like Third Place Books and University Book Store, so it’s actually more like 21 stores—in one day.” Accomplishing that task, he notes, will win the passport holder “25 percent off at all the bookstores for the whole next year. Last year, some 500 foolhardy people completed that challenge, and organizers are expecting more this year.” Which is pretty amazing, considering that finishing the lengthy Seattle course can take 12 or more hours. So one has to start early—very early this time around, as there are two additional stores to be reached. (In 2018, the goal was a comparatively meager 19 bookshops.) For the second time, I am running this race with my niece, Amie-June Brumble, who will be picking me up at the thoroughly ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m. The first place we plan to visit is a ferry ride away, and opens at 7.

Seattle isn’t the only city taking part in Saturday’s festivities; the event started in California in 2014, and has since spread to other U.S. metro areas, including Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis. But my present hometown—which ranks among the best-read towns in the United States—has become a chief player in this annual salute to indie retailers. And 2019 is a special one for me, in particular, as I have spent time over the last four months helping to launch one of the two new Seattle locations that “book crawlers” will visit during their tour: Madison Books, in the upscale Madison Park neighborhood, which officially opens tomorrow—just in time.

Sadly, none of the shops along our route specializes in crime fiction; the once-terrific Seattle Mystery Bookshop closed in September 2017, and no local replacement has yet been inaugurated. However, mystery bookstores elsewhere in the country are joining these festivities.

To learn more about the birth and development of Independent Bookstore Day, check out this Publishers Weekly report. For a list of (almost) all participating U.S. shops, consult this handy map.

READ MORE: “Bookstore Mysteries: Independent Bookstore Day,” by Janet Rudolph (Mystery Fanfare).

Race for Reading

Since I will be away from my office tomorrow, this is my final opportunity to remind everyone about Independent Bookstore Day, a delightful, all-day celebration of reading that’s scheduled to take place in various American cities on Saturday, April 28.

This will be the fourth year in a row my hometown of Seattle, Washington, has joined the festivities, and as I did in 2016 and again last year, I shall be taking part. There are 23 local-area retailers participating in 2018 (which does not include the terrific Seattle Mystery Bookshop, closed last September). People wishing to participate in this tourney can start at any one of those businesses. All you have to do is ask at the first stop for a free Passport Map, which provides the addresses of all 23 stores, and then have someone at each shop along the way stamp that passport. Everyone who can collect at least 19 such ink stamps during the day—thus finishing the “Champion Challenge”—will win a special card providing the holder with a 25-percent discount at all 23 bookshops for one year.

As The Seattle Times notes, folks who don’t think they’re up for the full competition can still benefit: “Visit three stores on the list on that day and get your passport stamped, and you’ll get a one-time 30 percent off coupon, good for any participating store.”

I’ve found this event to be most enjoyable over the years, even though it is also hectic and exhausting. (Last year, my favorite niece and I started the circuit at 6:30 a.m. and finished 12.5 hours later!) Like other repeat racers, I suspect, I have a route that works well for me—involving ferry trips across Puget Sound, a stop for pastries in the Kitsap County town of Poulsbo, and time enough to browse the shelves at each bookstore—and will be following that again on Saturday. I look forward to seeing many fellow Seattle bibliophiles over the course of the day. There were 340 “Champion Challenge” winners in 2017; I expect the route to be even more crowded this Saturday.

READ MORE: “Bookstore Mysteries: Independent Bookstore Day,” by Janet Rudolph (Mystery Fanfare).

Such a Card!

Remember back three weeks ago, when I wrote on this page about my favorite niece and I driving all over the Seattle area on Independent Bookstore Day, trying to visit at least 19 of 23 participating booksellers during a single (very long) Saturday? Well, all of the people who won that “Champion Challenge” were invited this afternoon to stop by Island Books, on Mercer Island (east of downtown Seattle), and pick up their 25-percent discount cards, valid at every one of the 23 stores. Needless to say, my niece and I didn’t pass up this opportunity.

While we were at Island Books, I asked how many people had completed the 2017 challenge. Turns out, there were 340 winners—up from 120 last year, the first time I’d undertaken the race. Now, it's true that there seemed to be more publicity about Independent Bookstore Day this time around than there had been in 2016, the second year of the IBD “Champion Challenge.” But still, 340 winners seems like a huge jump, and may result in the organizers thinking about ways to limit the number of 25-percent discount cards they hand out in 2018.

By the way, I noticed one change in the cards awarded this year. On the back of my 2016 discount card, it said my 25-percent reduction was “valid through Independent Bookstore Day 2017.” The new card, however, proclaims it is “valid until Independent Bookstore Day 2018.” That’s a significant change, because I’ll bet there were plenty of people bearing 2016 cards who employed them on race day last month, deriving one final benefit from their work of the year before. (I know I did.) In 2018, we’ll all have to pay full price for what we buy over the course of the challenge. That might incline some folks to make fewer purchases on what’s become a huge sales day for participating bookshops.

The Fast and the Curious

Yours truly (on the right) and my favorite niece and “Champion Challenge” partner, Amie-June Brumble, pose for a quick selfie outside Liberty Bay Books in Poulsbo.

After devoting yesterday to recuperation and quiet reading, I think I’m finally prepared to tackle a recap of this last Saturday’s frenzied Independent Bookstore Day “Champion Challenge.” This was the third annual such nationwide celebration of non-corporate American bookshops, an event that grew out of 2014’s California Bookstore Day. And boy, how it has grown! According to Publishers Weekly, 458 stores in 48 states took part this time around (up from 350 in 2015).

Although I have given thought now and then to moving out of Seattle, Washington, it’s events like this that remind me how lucky I am to live here. The goal for bibliophiles and other competitive folk engaged in the Emerald City’s 2017 “Champion Challenge” was to visit at least 19 of 23 participating indie bookstores over the course of a single business day (up from a minimum of 17 last year). Other U.S. cities, and giant stretches of the nation’s interior, don’t even have 23 independent local book retailers, but Seattle boasts many more than that. And everyone who rose to accept this challenge, collecting stamps on a “passport” from the merchants along the way, would win a card entitling him or her to a 25-percent discount at all 23 stores for an entire year. (Less-ambitious types were invited to stop in at just three of the shops, where they could enter a drawing for bookstore gift cards.)

In 2016, my intrepid race partners were technical writer Matthew Fleagle and bookseller James Crossley. This time, I teamed up instead with my favorite niece, Amie-June Brumble, who is every bit as much a reading zealot as I am. She and I had engaged in last year’s “Champion Challenge,” but separately and without ever crossing paths along the way; we didn’t know we were both in the game until it was all over. For this year’s all-day contest, we reasoned that it would be advantageous to combine our knowledge of the ins and outs of calling on so many bookshops in so little time ... and we knew it would be plenty of fun, too, to make the run together.

As I did last year, I’m going to give my account of Independent Bookstore Day 2017 through a series of statistics, all of them adding up to an exhausting but satisfying adventure.

Time we started out: 6:30 a.m., when Amie-June swung by my house in Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood, and we went to pick up breakfast to go (eggs and sausages) at nearby Ken’s Market. We’d originally planned to partake of the flavorsome offerings at Pete’s Egg Nest, where my two friends and I commenced our race last year, but it turns out that Pete’s doesn’t open till 7 a.m. Amie-June and I ate our Ken’s repast while waiting in line on the Seattle waterfront for the 7:55 ferry to Bainbridge Island, on Puget Sound, west of the city. Our plan was to hit the bookstores surrounding Seattle, in clockwise order, before paying calls on the great mass of shops within the city limits.

First bookstore reached: The Traveler, on the main drag in the Bainbridge town of Winslow. This place, which stocks supplies needed by journeying folk as well as a healthy array of travel guides and travel literature, wasn’t part of last year’s indie event, but it could well have been. We arrived at The Traveler at around 8:30, and ventured from there across the street to the better-known Eagle Harbor Book Company. Two bookstore stamps down, 17 more to go!

First book purchased: During our stop at Liberty Bay Books, in the Scandinavian-themed town of Poulsbo, I picked up a hardcover copy of Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology (Norton), which Amie-June had broadly hinted at wanting for her personal library. It seemed like a smart idea to start things off by making my contest cohort happy.

Total number of ferry trips necessary: 2, one from Seattle west to Bainbridge, and the second from Kingston (no relation) east to Edmonds, a suburb north of Seattle. By the time we rolled out of Edmonds, our “passports” contained four stamps!


Both sides of this year’s “passport,” including a list of all the bookstores taking part in the event. Click to enlarge.

Number of books purchased along the way: 3 for myself—a copy of Cold Earth (Minotaur), the brand-new, seventh entry in Ann Cleeves’ Shetland Island mystery series; a copy of the lauded If We Were Villains (Flatiron), by M.L. Rio; and a 1962 edition of Lady, Lady, I Did It!, the 14th installment in Ed McBain’s 87 Precinct series of police procedurals, with cover art by Robert McGinnis.

Number of books I really wanted to purchase: A dozen more, at the very least, among them David McCullough’s new book of essays, The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For (Simon & Schuster), David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (Doubleday), and Stephen Talty’s The Black Hand: The Epic War Between a Brilliant Detective and the Deadliest Secret Society in American History (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Oh, and a recently released crime novel that hasn’t already come across my desk: The Good Assassin, by Paul Vidich (Atria).

Number of books Amie-June purchased: Armloads—a few for herself, a variety of others for friends, several for her toddler son, and then a generous stack of paperbacks that she intends to install in the Little Free Library outside her house. I helped her pick out a few used mystery novels I thought would be broadly appealing.

Number of bookstores visited this year that I had never popped in to before: 3 (The Traveler; The Neverending Bookshop, a recently opened used-books specialist in the community of Bothell; and the new BookTree in Kirkland, east of Seattle).

Stores in which we spent the least time: We’d hoped to hang around each one for 20 minutes or more—long enough to know them better and show our respect for their participation in this daylong competition. However, two retailers—Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery, south of downtown Seattle, and Book Larder, a cookbook shop in the Fremont neighborhood, were so crowded (a consequence of their offering free food and drink) that we could do little more there than have our “passports” stamped, and get out again.

Stores in which I’d like to have spent some more time: Eagle Harbor Book Company; Seattle Mystery Bookshop in the Pioneer Square historic district (for reasons that any veteran follower of this blog will easily understand); and Queen Anne Book Company at the top of Queen Anne Hill, just north of downtown Seattle, which seems to have an especially well-curated selection of new books.

Quantity of gas consumed during the whole trip: A quarter-tank.

Number of complimentary cookies ingested during the excursion: Surely no more than 10. OK, maybe 12. Or 15.

Number of mimosas drunk: 1, by Amie-June at Liberty Bay Books. (I would have partaken as well, but I was doing the driving.)

Number of doughnuts consumed: 2, one by each of us (both chocolate-covered old fashioneds), from Sluy’s Poulsbo Bakery. Yum!

(Left) In addition to having her “passport” stamped, Amie-June asked each store to stamp her arm.

Number of sandwiches eaten: 2, one by each of us, acquired from The Cheesemonger’s Table in Edmonds. I had the Chicken Club, with grilled chicken breast, pancetta, Swiss cheese, tomato, and basil mayo on ciabatta bread.

Number of wrong turns: Only two this year. Thanks to Amie-June and her smart phone, we managed to avoid most navigating mishaps. Where we went wrong, it was usually because I didn’t hear her instructions clearly. Darn aging ears!

Lesson I swore to learn from last year, but didn’t: Take water along! After leaving Phinney Books in the Greenwood neighborhood (15 stamps down, 4 to go!), I suddenly found myself lightheaded and a bit nauseous. Fortunately, we’d only just invested in bottled water, and drinking some of that helped restore my equilibrium.

Lesson to remember for next year: Always double-check whether you’ve left your car in a pay-to-park space. ‘Nuff said.

Number of tequila shots drunk: 2, one by each of us, at Elliott Bay Book Company on Capitol Hill, where we concluded our circuit of shops at 7 p.m. and turned in our “passports”—with all 19 stamps!

Number of hours spent on the Champion Challenge: 12.5, an hour longer than last year. But then, we did swing by Amie-June’s parents’ house to drop off some Sluy’s doughnuts for her father.

Number of times I asked myself, “Why in the hell did you join this crazy escapade?”: 0, just as in 2016. If the “Champion Challenge” occurred more than once a year, I might feel differently. But 12 months between races allows me to recharge my batteries and forget any problems. Furthermore, having Amie-June along for the ride provided plenty of laughs and allowed us to share some thoughts on our respective lives. An altogether enjoyable journey!

I don’t know yet how many Seattleites completed the race this year. In 2015, the number was a mere 42; 2016 resulted in 120 winners. Each time Independent Bookstore Day comes around, there seems to be more publicity attending it, so there are probably more participants as well. Yet it’s a rather long investment of time, with plenty of opportunities for racers to ask themselves, “Why am I do this again?” And bumping the number of required stops up from 17 to 19 might have reduced the winner count this last Saturday. We shall see. Sometime during the next two or three weeks, winners are supposed to be invited to a concluding ceremony, during which they’ll pick up their 25-percent discount cards for the year. We’ll know then how many people made it all the way through.

READ MORE: “Seattle Bookstore Day 2017: Champions’ Journey,” by Emily Adams (NW Book Lovers).

Readying for a Retail Marathon

If you do not hear from me tomorrow, Saturday, it will be because I am busily engaged in Seattle’s third annual Independent Bookstore Day. Part of a national campaign to promote small, non-corporate booksellers, the Seattle event (held in Amazon’s backyard!) challenges bibliophiles and other fun-loving folk to visit at least 19 of 23 participating shops within the span of a single business day. Winners will subsequently receive a card ensuring them a 25-percent discount at all 23 of the stores for an entire year.

In 2016—the first time I jumped into this race—the minimum was 17 store visits, so the stakes have risen a bit (presumably to cut down on the number of winners; there were 120 last year, up from only 40 in 2015). I will be making this weekend’s run together with my favorite niece (and fellow bookaholic), Amie-June. She and I both entered Seattle’s 2016 bookstore tourney, and finished in the money—though we did so separately, without having discussed it in advance; and we didn’t even know we were both on the course until the frantic festivities were over. We’ll see if we can now combine what we’ve learned of this contest to our mutual advantage.

Despite the rivalrous nature of the Independent Bookstore Day “Champion Challenge,” it’s also immensely entertaining and a welcome incentive to explore bookshops you may not have called on previously. (No, you don’t have to buy something everywhere you go; you just need to pick up a printed “passport” at your first stop, and then have it stamped at each new place along the way.) A number of the retailers have scheduled special events for Saturday. A map of participating Seattle-area stores, with business hours, can be found here.

I’ll let you know in a near-future post how the day went.

Winners Circle

You may remember that on April 30, I participated in Seattle’s Independent Bookstore Day “Champion Challenge,” which required contestants to visit at least 17 of 21 participating bookshops around the city within one day. Everybody who succeeded received a 25-percent discount at all 21 establishments for a year.

Only 42 book lovers took on the “Challenge” in 2015, the first year this race was run. But as I learned last evening, during a crowded celebration at Ada’s Technical Books and Café on Capitol Hill, between 118 and 120 people finished in the money last month—almost three times as many. We’ll have to see whether organizers change the rules for 2017, to cut down on the number of winners. I hope not. I’m already planning to try again next year.

A Day at the Races

Perhaps not surprisingly, I survived yesterday’s Independent Bookstore Day “Champion Challenge,” though there were a few moments, especially late in the afternoon, when I could hardly imagine the thought of unbending myself from the car and venturing into yet another Seattle bookshop. The photograph above, taken about halfway through the expedition, shows me (second from the left) at Island Books on Mercer Island with store employees, other Challenge participants, and my two teammates, James Crossley (third from the left, with the old prophet-style beard) and Matthew Fleagle (third from the right, in the glasses). As I noted previously, the goal here was to visit at least 17 of the 21 participating indie stores. If we could accomplish that task by the close of business on Saturday, we’d win a one-year, 25 percent discount at all of those retail outlets.

To give you a sense of this adventure, here are a few stats.

Time we started out: 7 a.m., when the three of us met for a hearty breakfast at Pete’s Egg Nest in Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood. We traveled in a rented orange, very compact Fiat 500.

First bookstore reached, by ferry across Puget Sound: Eagle Harbor Book Company on Bainbridge Island at about 9 a.m.

Total number of ferry trips necessary: 2, one from Seattle west to Bainbridge Island, and the second from Kingston east to Edmonds (which is north of Seattle).

Number of books purchased along the way: 2, including a 1977 paperback copy of Ross Macdonald’s The Far Side of the Dollar, boasting cover artwork by Mitchell Hooks and bought at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop.

Number of books I really wanted to purchase: probably in excess of 30, including 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed, by Eric H. Cline, and Richard Russo’s brand-new Everybody’s Fool (his sequel to 1993’s Nobody’s Fool).

Number of bookstores visited yesterday that I had never popped in on before: 3 (Island Books, Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery, and Ada’s Technical Books and Café—all of which I’ll return to later).

(Left) Celebrating the end of our day-long journey, at Elliott Bay: Nothing says success like tequila in a paper cup.

Number of times we had to stop for gas: 1

Number of complimentary cookies ingested during the excursion: plus or minus 20

Number of complimentary chili dogs ingested: 1, at Book Larder, a cookbook store in the Fremont neighborhood, where author Kathleen Flinn was promoting her latest work, Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good: A Memoir with Recipes from an American Family.

1 lesson learned, in case I ever do this again: take water along! Hours into the trip, I realized that I was severely dehydrated and had to rush into a quickie mart for bottled refreshment.

Number of wrong turns: maybe half a dozen, most of which involved our trying to locate Liberty Books in Poulsbo. At one point, James’ smartphone seemed so confused by our twisting peregrinations, that it finally begged us to make a U-turn. Now!

Number of bands encountered: 1, at Mockingbird Books, a children’s store in the Green Lake area.

Number of tequila shots drunk: 1, at Elliott Bay Book Company on Capitol Hill, where we concluded our circuit of shops at 8:30 p.m.

Number of bookstore visits required to earn our 25-percent discount: 17

Number of bookstores actually visited: an overachieving 19

Number of hours spent on the Champion Challenge: 11.5

Number of times I asked myself, “Why in the hell did you join this crazy escapade?”: 0. It was actually a delight from start to finish. I recommend it to any book nerds who can spend an entire day discovering, or rediscovering, some of the dozens of independent bookstores Seattle offers.

I understand that at some point in the next two weeks, all of us who completed this competition will be asked to gather together to celebrate our accomplishment and receive our discount certificates. I expect to learn then how many people were actually running the course. In 2015—the first year this Challenge was mounted in Seattle—42 participants finished. It’s hard to know exactly how many people did the same thing this year, as many of the Seattleites visiting stores yesterday had set themselves a more modest goal: three bookstore stops only, which entered them in a drawing for mystery prizes. Judging from my own experience of the day, I’d guess that the number of people calling on at least 17 stores doubled this year.