When I wrote in regards to the closing of a Barnes & Noble bookstore in San Jose, I didn't know the way many other people felt a way of loss. But I heard from several readers who were very sad to see the shop close its doors on January nineteenth.

“I cannot imagine how I will exist without my Almaden Barnes & Noble store,” wrote Barbara Carmichael. “Real book lovers know that you don't just order a title – you have to pick it up, turn it over, read a page or two, and then decide. I'm grieving a great loss here. “

Mary Stradner wrote a letter to the company expressing her disappointment at the loss of the only large, full-service bookstore in South San Jose. “It's sad to see another closing of a book deal, especially one in such an accessible location,” she said in an email to me. “I didn't get a very hopeful response about a new place.”

Margaret Hengel, who serves with me on the Silicon Valley-Reads Community Advisory Board, said the store is also one of her treasures. “I walked in yesterday and left with tears streaming down my face.”

Then the opposite shoe dropped when Books Inc. announced its bankruptcy bid just a few days later. (At least the “we're trying to survive” sort of bankruptcy despite the fact that the Berkeley store is closing.) Luckily, as Carol Zink jogged my memory, there are still books inc. -Locations in Campbell, Mountain View and Palo Alto.

And while I listed a few of the denizens of brick-and-mortar bookstores in bookstores that may still patronize, I didn't get all of them. Joyce Gross jogged my memory of a neighborhood treasure in Saratoga: Book go roundwhich has been around and selling books, records, CDs and DVDs since 1983. Even higher, the non-profit nonprofit store on Oak Street is the Saratoga Library (which is an excellent reminder of this one for favoritism too).

And bookstores aren’t all created equal, as Bruce Tritch identified. His Spacecat comic store shared a wall with the Barnes & Noble in Westgate Mall, until the massive store's corporate suits made it clear they didn't like having a “rival” as a neighbor. “Perhaps the lack of a giant corporate entity is good for small business bookstores in San Jose in the long run,” Tritch said.

We can all hope that that is true.

On the campaign trail: The race can be for San Jose's District 3's latest representative on the City Council, which covers downtown and areas around it. Seven candidates qualify for the April 8 election.

With just over two months to go, attending to know the candidates is more vital than ever, which is why three major San Jose organizations – the Chamber of Commerce, the San Jose Downtown Association and the Rotary Club of San Jose – have teamed up for a candidate forum on February twelfth hold off.

It is predicted The Fourth Street Parking Garage downtown. You can register to go to Participate below www.sjdowntown.com/d3.

Good deed department: Good Samaritan Hospital's success was a fantastic donation for West Valley Community Services, which received a $10,000 donation from the medical center to support its Park-It Market mobile food pantry. Patrick Rohan, CEO of Good Samaritan Hospital, said San Jose Hospital is honored to assist with Cupertino's mission to be certain that nobody in the neighborhood goes hungry.

How did this generosity come about? For the second yr within the series, Good Samaritan took first place in HCA Healthcare's annual sculpture competition, allowing them to donate $10,000 to a neighborhood nonprofit organization. Their winning entry, the Good Sam Can Van, was inspired by Park-It Market and created with greater than 1,500 cans of food, which may also be donated.

WVCS Executive Director Sujatha Venkatraman said the donation will make a giant difference for families facing food insecurity. “It helps us bring fresh, healthy food directly to those who need it most, removing barriers and strengthening our community,” she said.

Music to our ears: The Mission Chamber Orchestra will perform Feb. 2 on the Italian American Heritage Foundation Cultural Center on North Fourth Street in San Jose. And you possibly can bet this system “Sounds of the Motherland” can be more Italian than the Tower of Pisa. Composers include Gioachino Rossini, Alessandro Marchello and Jeremy Cavaterra – together with a reputation most of you’ll immediately hum, Vince Guaraldi.

Longtime IAHF member Ken Borelli notes that not only was Guaraldi an Italian American, but he also hailed from San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood and this yr marks the sixtieth anniversary of perhaps his best-known play, famously featured in “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” became . “” Unfortunately, the nice jazz pianist died far too young, suffering a fatal heart attack in 1976 on the age of 47 after playing a set at Butterfield's, a nightclub in Menlo Park.

Tickets for the three:30 PM concert can be found at www.missionchamber.org.

AUTHOR! AUTHOR!: Since we began with books, let's wind up with the women of the Meet the Author charity on February third. The featured author is Sam Carlino, the owner of Sam's Bar-B-Que on Bascom Avenue, who wrote about his grandfather's infamous history with organized crime in “Colorado's Carlino Brothers: A Bootlegging Empire.” I used to be lucky enough to listen to these stories from Sam just a few years ago when he was working on the book, and it's a tremendous, well-told story.

The 9:30 a.m. event can be held at St. Thomas of Canterbury Church, 1522 McCoy Ave. in San Jose. Tickets are $40 each (with proceeds going toward scholarships for middle school patrons attending Children of Sacred Heart and Our Lady of Grace schools). Go to www.ladiesofcharitySanjose.org More information.

Originally published: January 25, 2025 at 6:45am PST

OAKLAND – Despite a devastating fire late last month that destroyed a preferred East Bay bookstore, community supporters are already celebrating the shop's atmosphere with impromptu events, neighborhood book drives and literary fundraisers.

Less than two weeks after Oakland-based bookstore East Bay Booksellers was destroyed by fire, an outpouring of support from the community has raised over $215,000 to assist the shop owner and employees rebuild.

“It's pretty overwhelming,” said Brad Johnson, the bookstore's owner. “I wasn't prepared for this level of financial support.”

The Online fundraiser calls the shop a “community home, an intellectual home, an artistic home and a literary home.” It has raised greater than 2,000 donations and was nearing a $250,000 goal as of Thursday afternoon.

Many donors also left warm messages for the owners.

“I love this place so much and sincerely hope we can rebuild it,” wrote one donor.

“Bookstores are my safe place where I seek solace on hard days and celebrate on good days. And EBB was my favorite, an Oakland gem, and I was really happy to have it in my neighborhood,” said one other.

Johnson attributes the willingness to assist to the bookstore's “deep roots,” which were first laid by the shop's predecessor, Diesel Books, after which expanded upon by the team at East Bay Booksellers. The owners of the previous store immediately organized an internet fundraiser to support Johnson, a former worker.

The bookstore has received support and encouragement from around the globe, he said – not only financially, but additionally through emails and messages from people who find themselves confident “that (the store) can do it.”

“It’s encouraging, inspiring and motivating as I try to find a way to get us back in business,” Johnson said.

The fire was a “shock,” Johnson said, not just for him but additionally for the shop's employees. Fire officials said earlier this week they imagine the fireplace was began by accident.

Johnson added that the vast majority of the donations will likely be used to proceed paying worker salaries and advantages.

“They're resting and thinking about how to approach their day,” Johnson said, adding: “We're all adapting to the sudden change in our lives.”

With the insurance payout and funds raised, the East Bay Booksellers will find a way to pay a few yr's salary, Johnson said. The funds may even allow Johnson to search for a short lived location for his business.

Until then, Johnson has been working to seek out creative ways to proceed processing online orders and operate the bookstore and not using a physical store, he said.

He is working to seek out a way for patrons to select up online orders placed before the fireplace. The bookstore may even host a pop-up event at nearby Atomic Gardens on Aug. 24, where Johnson plans to sell tote bags and other items, he said.

“I can think of ways to be a bookseller, which I am – I didn't find out until fairly late in life that I was meant to be,” Johnson said. “If I can find ways to do it differently than I've done before, who's to say what lessons I can learn from doing it in a more normal way.”

The book deliveries and pop-ups will allow Johnson to remain in business – even when he’s making “only a fraction” of what the shop normally makes every month – until the insurance claim is made and he can find temporary space, he said.

The store also hosted a poetry reading that had been planned before the fireplace – however it was became a fundraiser with books donated by other bookstores, Johnson said. The event was held at Gilman Street Brewery, one among the companies that helped Johnson.

“Whatever we sell basically comes back to us in full,” he added. “Creative ways (of raising funds) are just very satisfying, very cool.”

“It keeps me from feeling too sorry for myself because it shows how your community is supporting a business they want to support,” he added.

Kar Johnson, a bookseller friend of Brad Johnson who runs Green Apple Books in San Francisco, organized a literary Fundraiser on Sunday to boost funds for the shop. The event, held on the Gilman Brewing Company in Berkeley, includes readings from five authors.

The event is free and donations are appreciated, in line with the Eventbrite page.

Johnson said he hopes to eventually return to the enduring constructing that when housed East Bay Booksellers. However, the bookstore's space has been leased and the constructing's owner will handle insurance claims and reconstruction, he said.

Johnson stressed that he’s attempting to remain hopeful concerning the bookstore's future.

“I think you just feel what you feel in the moment and you try to have some basic hope,” Johnson said. “At the end of the day, we have that support and they'll go along with whatever we can muster.”

A brand new chapter within the lifetime of Oakland's beloved Bookmark Bookstore, which has been in business for 3 many years, has begun. On June 15, the used bookstore – all proceeds of which go to support Oakland's public libraries – opened its recent location in the town center in a historic room that is larger, brighter and, well, just has more bookshelves.

“The old building was deep and narrow and had a few windows at the front,” says Sven Geddes, co-manager of Bookmark. “Here we are on the corner and get a lot of sunlight. It is very bright and open with high ceilings. The building has been renovated – it is really beautiful.”

The old Bookmark was positioned at 721 Washington Street and the brand new one is three blocks up the road at 933 Broadway in a historic constructing called the Delger Block, built around 1880.

Geddes says the move just made sense. “The foot traffic is much better here – we're a block from BART and on Broadway. Plus, hopefully we'll get a (donation) door on the 10th Street side so we don't have to run warehouses in the store anymore.”

Visitors to the brand new Bookmark will notice some changes. There's a big, wood children's bookcase that a board member has lovingly restored. And the shop has plans to expand its collection of about 17,000 physical items to incorporate mysterious types of literary “ephemera,” Geddes says.

Before the move, the shop had an enormous sale, but the gathering remains to be incredibly large, with some treasures that were kept in a back room and storage area now on display.

“We have a lot of inexpensive, high-quality books,” says Geddes. “Most paperbacks are $1 or $3 for $2. Children's books are $2 to $5, paperbacks are $4 to $6, and hardcovers are $5 to $8.”

The Bookmark is currently within the soft opening phase and is planning the grand opening for the tip of July.

Details: Open Wednesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to five p.m., 933 Broadway, Oakland; fopl.org/the-bookmark.

Tanya Sedneva was a shy child who at all times had her nose in a book.

The Los Gatos resident's long-standing love of books sparked her childhood dream of opening her own bookstore, a dream that Sedneva eventually forgot as she became caught up within the every day grind of adult life.

When she was laid off from her job as a project manager at a technology company last yr, she returned to her childhood goals. She recently opened Beyond Text, an independent bookstore at 218 North Santa Cruz Ave. in downtown Los Gatos. Sedneva said the shop will offer books from various genres along with gifts, board games and residential decor.

Sedneva said she placed special emphasis on offering novel and illustrated versions of popular books to focus on the physical experience of reading a book.

“How can anyone read something boring when there are such great editions?” Sedneva wrote in a caption for an Instagram post of a novelty edition of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit.

The store's name, Sedneva said, is a nod to the need to read a physical book reasonably than use an e-reader, to transcend the mere words on a page and the texture of a book, the form of the text, the Appreciate the photographs and the duvet.

“My idea is that you can gain additional experience by having a physical copy in your hand,” Sedneva said.

She also paid particular attention to the design of the bookstore, hoping to create an environment where customers would feel welcome and comfy.

“I wanted to inspire visitors to linger and immerse themselves in the world of books,” she said.

In addition to selling books and other items, Sedneva also desires to host community events comparable to book clubs, discussion groups and writer talks, she said. The store already had a Mafia game night scheduled for May 16 and writer talks on June 1 and eight.

Although Sedneva doesn't have an official store website yet, she said people can learn more in regards to the store on her Instagram account @_beyondtext_.

Beyond Text is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to six p.m