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L.A. bibliophiles, listen up. As BookTok and a return to analog hobbies have inspired a recent reading renaissance, Los Angeles’s many excellent independent bookstores have enjoyed renewed popularity. And this weekend, in a departure from a typical boozy “crawl” event, the literary-minded Los Angeles Indie Book Crawl is encouraging shoppers to travel between 13 of the city’s very best options.
Running from Friday, July 24, to Sunday, July 26, the free, all-ages event is modeled after popular book crawls in San Diego and Seattle. And the more you visit, the more merch and prizes you earn. Along the way, authors will be stopping by for book signings. Read on for all you need to know about the inaugural event.
The 13 bookstores participating in the crawl are spread out all across the city, from Studio City (Annabelle’s Book Club) to Manhattan Beach (Pages: A Bookstore), and from Santa Monica (Children’s Book World) to Los Feliz (Skylight Books) to Pasadena (Vroman’s). Culver City has three stops on the route: Village Well Books & Coffee, romance bookstore the Ripped Bodice and the Black-owned Malik Books.
Notably absent from the itinerary are any Downtown spots (read: the Last Bookstore). Its Valley location and plant-filled Montrose offshoot Lost Books are also not participating, though if you have kids, you should absolutely still visit Montrose to shop at Once Upon a Time, the nation’s oldest dedicated children’s bookstore—and pet the store cat, Pippi Longstocking.
Filling out the list are the Book Jewel in Westchester, Chevalier’s Books in Larchmont and Diesel in Brentwood. And, some great news: After sharing that they would be closed indefinitely after the Sunset Boulevard water main break last week, Book Soup has already reopened to shoppers, just in time to participate in the crawl. Though that stretch of Sunset remains closed to cars, foot traffic is welcome (just plan some extra time to park).
Along the way, expect special programming and signings from some of the most popular authors of today, including Taylor Jenkins Reid (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo), Gabrielle Zevin (the excellent Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow), Rosecrans Baldwin (Everything Now), Carlyn Greenwald (Murder Land), Suzanne and Max Lang (Grumpy Monkey) and many more. Some authors will even share their own reading picks and serve as guest booksellers for an hour, like Laura Dave (The Last Thing He Told Me) at Diesel. Meanwhile, Vroman’s is kicking off its summer sale and hosting a summer concert on the Paseo outside. Check the L.A. Indie Book Crawl Instagram account for up-to-date details.
As for the crawl part, how does it work exactly? Well, unfortunately you won’t be scoring free books along the way, but when you visit a store and spend $10, you get a stamp on your Book Crawl Passport—you can pick one up at the first spot on your list. The more stores you visit, the more merch and prizes you snag (think an LAIBC sticker, pin and a free audiobook). It’s totally up to you which order you visit the shops in. If you put in some serious mileage and visit all 13, you’ll receive a LAIBC tote bag full of bookish goodies and will be entered in a raffle to win $25 gift cards to all of the shops, for a total value of $325.
For details about each of the shops and their respective hours, check the LAIBC website, where each store has also listed more neighborhood gems where you can grab a bite to eat or continue your shopping spree. And if you don’t want to spend all weekend in the car trekking between spots, the event has kindly drawn up this custom transit map, which shows how to get from stop to stop via Metro or buses. Happy reading!