La Playa Books

Please join us February 22nd at the Writer's Symposium By The Sea where we will welcome Nadia Bolz-Weber to the stage. Her books are available now in our store.

We are back open today 10am-5pm! We can help start your new year off right with a great book. Masks are required before entering. Thank you!

Aw shucks. When half your staff is sick, you gotta do it. Sorry folks! Our gift to you today is a teeny peek at a handful of the items we’re bringing to the @rarebooksla fair in February. Let’s try this whole ‘open’ thing tomorrow, shall we?

Hi Folks! We are closed today due to multiple staff’s non-Covid illness. Open tomorrow at 10! Thank you for understanding.Hi Folks! We are closed today due to multiple staff’s non-Covid illness. Open tomorrow at 10! Thank you for understanding.

Did you save your mystery coupon? Dig around the house and find it! This month is The Month to use it. Remember not to open it - just bring it along, stack up your books and we’ll cheer loudly behind our masks as The Big Reveal occurs. Promise. It’s January for heaven’s sake, let’s not get too dry.

We get that you’ve got resolutions, but let’s not get crazy. Perfect reads will be available to you starting Tuesday. Back to normal hours, 10-5 Tuesday-Sunday. Thank you for a totally awesome 2021, and an even better ‘22. We look forward to hearing about what you read on vacation!

Tickets are still available for the February event with Nadia Bolz-Weber and her books are in the store now:

Morning still life. We are busy! With #wi6 Winter Institute for booksellers blaring in the background we’re shipping orders- some that we just put online last night. Back door pick up continues so if you want to catch the latest additions to our inventory just shop our used books off our website! Ok, back to work!

This is the list we’re reading now. With so much to read, and so much work to do, you can feel accomplishment with these:

Some outstanding reading suggestions from Eso Won Books in LA for February’s Black History Month:

It’s a beautiful day in La Playa but spend a little time virtually at the Rare Books LA book fair. At 3pm they host a zoom session called ‘Reading the Drink/Drinking the Read’ with the Master Distiller of St.George Spirits. Love a gin and tonic like we do? Join the zoom and check out our Material Medica at our booth with notes on ingredients that are medicinal and delicious !

Fascinating article:

It’s true! Set your alarms tonight to see the three items we saved as a surprise. Also wrestling, medicine, Wallace Stevens and more! Head to Rare Books LA to visit the virtual fair for free!

See you tomorrow in our 'booth' at Rare Books LA! And please sign up for their fascinating lectures and panel discussions this weekend.

Beautiful gravures from ‘The Vanishing Race:The Last Great Indian Council’ by Joseph K. Dixon, 1913

Celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day with this interview including poetry readings by Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. We’re looking forward to carrying this anthology in our store soon.

Indoor shopping is back! Today at 11 we open our doors again. Visit us Mondays and Fridays at reduced occupancy, with mandatory masks and gloves. We’ll have our outdoor sales continue until the 25th and back door pick up is always contact green and easy! See you soon!

Say that threetimesthrice! Seriously though, we’re up past our normal bed time cataloguing for @rarebooksla which starts next week Thursday!We’ll be showing just a peek each day of the medicinal, the powerful, and the corruptible (Dick’s Joint & the Captain’s fans!) books leading up to our 18-book display next week. Did we mention we’re also opening on Monday, in a ltd fashion?

When you trade a book for a gorgeous loaf from local baker @bornandbreadsd AND you get an extra muffin AND compound butter AND Bookseller Sarah nabs a chunk! We can’t say enough good things about local supporting local! If you’re in the 92106/7 hit up our man Frank!

Our fellow bookstore in Del Mar, Diesel Books, tells it like it is. Please be patient if your order doesn’t arrive the next day. And given the supply chain, it’s true- if you sell rate Christmas by giving books, start now. (And check out Diesel’s Go Fund Me- they are lovely folks!) There’s a paper problem, there’s a printing problem, and there’s a distribution problem, Evans observed. All of those are going to become very big come the holidays. You can see now that places ...are encouraging people, [to do] holiday shopping early. Also, you don’t want to be in crowds, right? But because of all the problems, book publishers aren’t sure exactly how well certain books, especially those people look for as gifts, are going to do because of all the different conditions and restrictions independent bookstores across the country are under and whether or not there will be another wave of COVID. So they’re very conservative in their print runs. That means when something really sells, they have to reprint. But all the printing is slowed down, shut down, socially distanced [in] China there are so many different issues. Those books will not be as available. See more

Join us a week from today at the Rare Books LA Virtual Book Fair! Learn about books bound in human skin, drop in for a virtual happy hour chat about cocktail books, and shop our virtual book fair booth for some treasures of your own. Rare Books LA Virtual Book Fair features a variety of talks and tours and more than 100 leading specialists in antiquarian books, fine prints, photography, and ephemera from 22 states and four continents. Thursday, October 15, 10 a.m./PDT... Sunday, October 18, until 5 p.m./PDT Bookmark the website, where you will find a complete list of exhibitors and you can RSVP for our free specialty tours and programs: https://rarebooksla.getmansvirtual.com

Enjoying the fall colors in ‘Sixty Years of Book Collecting’. This is our birthday month! 2020 makes it feel like 60, but it’s only been about 30 years that Point Loma has had a bookstore in our little space. We hope you’ll visit us this month as we celebrate 4 years of being ‘La Playa!’