My favorite Indy bookstore, Epilogue Books, is closing its doors despite the copious amount of money I spend there on a regular basis. SOB!!! This marks the second bookstore to leave Ballard in the past two months, leaving only the Secret Garden Bookstore. SGB is lovely, but doesn’t carry romance. Epilogue was unable to come to an agreement with their landlord. Are all my favorite stores in Ballard destined to close? I could walk to Epilogue. They carried a large selection of used romance and fantasy books. Where will I buy books now??

Epilogue is having a store closing blowout sale with 20%-70% off all new and used titles. The sale began Sunday and the neighbors showed up in droves. The line ran all the way to the back of the store. I picked up a new version of Peter Pan, a book of native american poetry that fits my world building for my current manuscript, Anne Bishop’s “Pillars of the World” (which was very good), Julia Quinn’s “Mr. Cavendish I presume”, Liz Carlyle’s “Never Seduce a Rake”, and Elizabeth Haydon’s “Rhapsody”.

Can small, independently owned bookstores outlast this crummy economy? Where do you shop for books?

Mr. Wonderful and I just got back from seeing Disney/Pixar’s movie Up. We both quite recommend it. So cute! Bring your tissues. I’m not sure how kids view it (we were some of the only childless people in the theater), but for adults it had an important message about life’s little adventures.

As a kid, Carl Fredrickson dreams of flying to South America to visit the land that time forgot just like his hero. He meets a little girl with the same dream, grows up, gets married and lives a really cute life of montages. They still dream of that trip, but life keeps getting in the way. At age 78, Carl’s wife dies, and Carl is left alone in their little house with the city closing in around him and life passing him by. Contractors and businessmen are knocking on his door trying to get him to sell his house so they can tear it down and build something big (like Trader Joe’s/LA Fitness). He decides enough is enough, ties a million balloons to the top of his house and flies UP to adventure.

Unfortunately an 8-year-old hitchhiker tags along. Russell is one merit badge short of graduating to senior wilderness explorer, the “helping the elderly” badge, and he is determined to get it. They fly to South America and land on the mountain where Carl’s childhood hero was last seen trying to find a mythic tall, colorful bird. They meet a pack of dogs, cue comic relief, and go toe-to-toe with the inhabitants of a very strange lost jungle. Carl want to move his house to the falls to fulfill his and his wife’s dream adventure. Life might have other plans.

In my neck of the woods, we have our very own little house that defied the encroachment of the city. Edith refused $1 million to sell her house near the Ballard Bridge to developers, even though the rest of the block was bought up. The developers built the five-story building around her. You can read the fascinating story here, or get your very own tattoo.

Edith’s house in Ballard (surrounded by LA Fitness & Trader Joe’s)

Carl’s house in Disney’s Up