My bookish week in the PNW

This last week was filled with trading books from my bookshelves that I’ve already read (and that I’m not keeping as shelf trophies, IYKYK) out for new-to-me books from other readers’ collections!

Between a local event and Little Free Libraries, the theme of this week truly was just a good, old fashioned book swap.

This week I’m reading…

Our Perfect Storm by Carley Fortune

I’ve been listening to Our Perfect Storm on audio, and I am loving it! Two best friends who have been drifting apart decide to use her honeymoon to relax and reconnect after she is dumped the day before her wedding – what’s not to love about that? Friends to lovers, vacation romance, and lots of delicious food descriptions. I’m a happy camper!

Book Swap & Sip at Odd Otter Brewing

Mixing it up starting with the end of the week, but I have to jump in by talking about this super fun event!

People who know me out in the real world know that I’m not a beer girlie, so it may surprise some people to know that one of my favorite spots in Tacoma is this delightful, Otter-themed brewery.

And it’s become even more so recently, because they have really upped their game when it comes to hosting events – and especially bookish events! This week it was a book swap, complete with a local author signing and an amazing mobile bookstore that makes the rounds to events in the area.

The books up for trade…

I brought three books with me to contribute to the swap table in the back of the brewery, which definitely represent a wide variety of my book collection.

The first was The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling.

This is a book and a series that I LOVE, and absolutely still have shelf trophies of in my library, but I had an extra copy of this first book in the series.

(Shameless plug, but if you want to see my full thoughts on the book from when I read it around four years ago, you can take a look at my review here!)

The Four Dorothys by Paul Ruditis

This is a YA book that I read all the way back in junior high or high school – long before I forced my many book-thoughts on anyone but my mom. I remember enjoying it when I read it (I was a theater kid, so I was already biased in its favor), but it certainly wasn’t something that was foundational to my young life.

And despite that, it has been included on my shelves and moved from home to home since the time that I read it all those years ago. It was definitely time to let it find its place on a new bookshelf.

Hungry Hearts by Julie Hoag

This is one that I was gifted early on in my online reading journey, but it turned out that it wasn’t going to be the one for me.

I DNFed this book pretty early, and I kept it all these years in case I wanted to go back and give it another go – but that was starting to feel like the pair of jeans stuck in the back of the closet in case I can fit back into them one day.

While I’m not quite emotionally ready to let go of the old denim yet (one of these days those pre-pregnancy jeans just might come in handy, and who am I to risk not having them?), I’ve recently decided that there are too many amazing books in the world that I’ll never have the time to read. So I’m working on getting rid of the books that I’ll likely never go back to and make room for the next obsession or shelf trophy.

Now on to the rest of the fun!

After dropping my books off on the table for swapping, and having a few sips of a delicious beverage (it was mama’s night out, and I was going to enjoy it) my first stop was the mobile bookstore!

I have been following along with Lost the Plot ever since Ash, the owner, started posting content on TikTok about the behind the scenes of creating her mobile bookstore, focusing on adult fiction from under represented authors, from the ground up.

Ash is adorable, her videos are delightful, and truly, who among us hasn’t dreamed about quitting our daily life to open a bookstore? So it’s safe to say I was hooked from the very start, and I had just been waiting for the time that I could finally explore her little slice of heaven for myself!

While I didn’t let myself buy anything this time (since we’re on a budget, and I knew my next stop was going to get me), I had the most fun just getting to chat and look through the inventory. And believe me when I say that there are plenty of things that I’m keeping my eye on for next time she’s in my area.

Check out the Lost the Plot website here, to learn more about the bookstore and see where she’ll be popping up next!

And that brings me back to the excitement inside, with a signing table with local author NC Barton!

I had met NC before at a book fair earlier this year that was filled to the brim with local authors and bookish goodies, and she is just the sweetest! My mom (who went to that event with me) and I had a lovely time chatting with her, but when we were making our final rounds, we weren’t able to make it back to NC’s table to pick up the book that we had been eyeing.

So you know I had to get it this time around! It was like the book Goddesses were giving me another go, and I couldn’t disappoint them. Right?

It was so lovely getting to chat with NC again in a little bit calmer of an environment (I was there pretty early in the evening, so she had only just opened up her signing table), and I can’t wait to catch up with her again at the next event.

The book that I picked up was Meet Me at the Loch, which she was kind enough to sign for me! It is a Grumpy x Sunshine Celebrity romance set in a Scottish castle in the Highlands – so really, is there anything more you could want? I’m not sure there is.

You can purchase a copy of Meet Me at the Loch via Bookshop.org here, or check out the rest of what NC Barton has to offer on her website!

All in all it was a fabulous evening.

I got to chat with some of my online book friends, explore Lost the Plot, check out the Little Free Library onsite at Odd Otter (more on that later!), and walked away with four new to me books!

The books that I walked away with are…

Falling like Leaves by Misty Wilson

The book blurb describes this as “Gilmore Girls meets Jenny Han,” so you KNOW I had to grab it. A teen romcom about a city girl stuck in a small town, running into her post-glow up former best friend, during an annual fall festival that Stars Hollow would be proud of. Yes please.

Tangled Up in You by Christina Lauren

A part of the Meant to Be series where different authors take on the task of reimagining different Disney princess stories, this one (obviously) taking a turn on Rapunzel and Flynn’s story from Tangled. And Christina Lauren (best friends and writing partners, truly the dream) are some of my favorite authors for contemporary romance, so this has been on my list for quite a while! I was very excited to find it in the Little Free Library.

Vegetable Gardening in the Pacific Northwest by Lorene Edwards Forkner

This one is pretty self-explanatory, honestly. Since moving from an apartment to a house, I’ve had a dream of being one of those girls with a thriving back garden. One of my best friends has the DREAMIEST garden you’ve ever seen, with everything from delicious veggies to florals that I want to fill every one of my vases with, so the daydream only grows by the minute. And I thought this might be fun to add to my collection, to thumb through and try to get some tips to maybe keep up with her one of these days!

Little Free Library Week 2026

Okay, circling back around to the beginning of the week now.

Sunday, May 17th was the first ever Little Free Library Day, and kicked off Little Free Library week – a full week of celebrating these tiny book sharing spaces in communities all around us.

Little Free Libraries provide every person in their communities with 24/7 access to books and have programs in place to champion diverse books and reading.

I’m a huge fan of Little Free Libraries and have gone out of my way to visit tons of them over the years, both in my own community and passing through on road trips. Each LFL is different and unique, with so much life and personality put into them by the stewards that maintain them. I can’t wait for the day that I get to put together my own LFL – so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to celebrate!

A snapshot of the Little Free Libraries that we visited!

I visited a few of these on my way to and from someplace else, and one was even onsite at Odd Otter! The rest were an outing all their own – baby girl and I spent an afternoon driving around exploring different neighborhoods and dropping off books as we went.

It was the best way to spend a quiet, sunny day.

In honor of the celebration, the folks behind the scenes even put together a bingo board that you could download and play all week long – while I didn’t quite get a full-board blackout, I had a lot of fun crossing some things off.

And two completed lines and three near misses isn’t too shabby, right?

Head to the Little Free Library website to learn more about it, and to look at the map to find your closest LFL!

I had a really terrific week finding new-to-me books and doing my own little library refresh.

Me to secondhand books:

My bookish week in the PNW

There was lots of book-related fun to be had in my neck of the PNW last week!

From date night with my partner to outings to share with baby girl – these were the perfect excuses to get out into the real world this week.

This is a new post style for me, a bit closer to the true-to-form blog post than I’ve explored in a while. The style and format may take shape and change here and there, but I’m hoping to add these more casual chats fairly regularly, even if it doesn’t end up being every week. Sometimes mom is busy, you know?

Right now my books are my time to turn my mom brain off. Sometimes these outings are an excuse to talk books with people older than a year old, and sometimes they’re an excuse for the baby and I to simply get out of the house. And while I’m pretty sure this section of my “brand,” for lack of a better term, is mostly just me talking to myself on the internet, I like the idea of celebrating those fun memories and breaks in routine.

And if I get to celebrate all of the fun events and local small businesses around me at the same time? Truly all the better.

This week I’m reading…

The Devil of Arden by R.H. Linehan

As soon as I saw the author describing this as Robin Hood x A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I knew that I absolutely had to read it. Throw in Autumn Equinox vibes and a slow burn romance filled with banter and sassy nicknames, and I am all over it.

Storytime at Page and Pine Books

On Thursday morning baby girl and I attended the cutest story time hosted by Page and Pine, an independent bookstore in Puyallup that we absolutely love.

It was themed around nursery rhymes and, together with a small group of kiddos and their grownups, we spent the morning reading and singing about speckled frogs and itsy-bitsy spiders.

This was such a lovely way to spend a morning! It was just a quiet, low-pressure event completely centered around reading and singing and letting the babies show off their newly found walking skills by wandering all around the bookstore.

Plus, all of the other kiddos were really close in age to my baby girl as well – while she does have lots of “cousins,” there is a pretty wide range of ages in the group. So any time there is a group this close in her age it always feels like such a treat. At least it does for me.

And, of course, girlie takes after me, so we couldn’t leave without picking something out to take home with us. We decided to grab the Five Little Speckled Frogs book that was a part of the story time, and she very excitedly read it again with my partner that night before bedtime.

The Music of Jane Austen with the Seattle Symphony

Throughout the course of my life, I truly believe that I have spent at least two cumulative years watching Jane Austen adaptations.

And I’m not even counting the retellings, although I would argue that Clueless and the first Bridget Jones are possibly perfect movies. Sorry, film bros.

I’m a sucker for a BBC mini-series of all varieties.

And both the 1995 and 2005 Pride and Pejudices (Prides and Prejudice? Pride and Prejudici?) are among the pillars holding up my entire personality.

Truly I can’t have any form of potato with dinner without internally complimenting a fair cousin for the exemplary vegetable; or even think about the existence of my birthday without contemplating my status as a) a burden to my parents, and b) frightened.

So when I saw that the Seattle Symphony was hosting a night dedicated to the music of the adaptations that bewitch me body and soul, I immediately knew that I wanted to go – and my partner was amazing enough to get us tickets for my birthday!

There were people dressed in their Bridgerton-best, there was onsite book shopping from Seattle romance favorite Beguiled Books, and there was even someone leading regency style dancing in the lobby that Emma Woodhouse would have approved of. It was an absolute dream.

And there were two more stars of the evening, in addition to the symphony.

The first is soprano Jane Eaglen who was featured in several songs throughout the evening, and whose name you might recognize from the soundtrack for the Sense and Sensibility movie from 1995 starring Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet. Y’all, she was incredible.

The second was the host of the evening, acting as a narrator and storyteller – Susannah Harker, miss Jane Bennet herself from the 1995 Pride and Prejudice. Are you kidding me? I lost my mind. I fangirled. I want her to narrate my life.

This was seriously the best night. The music was so amazing. The dancing was so much fun. I only wish I had realized people were going to show up in costume, because I absolutely could have obsessed over that for the couple of weeks leading up to it.

Audiobook Walk with the Tacoma Silent Book Club

Tacoma’s chapter of the Silent Book Club got together on Sunday morning at Titlow Park to take a walk and soak in the sunshine of an early PNW summer day.

I used this walk to finish up The Breakup Vacation by Anna Gracia on audio. I pulled this one out of my Libro.fm library because after all of the fantasy/romantasy and other slightly more intense reading I’ve been doing lately, I wanted something a bit light. Something that I wouldn’t have to think too hard about, and I could just listen and giggle and kick my metaphorical feet about the romance. This book was all of that and more, and I really enjoyed it!

After the walk the group found a spot on the grass in the park to sit and chat, and a couple of folks even brought some fun beverages – let me tell you, I will be much more prepared with some fun snacks and things for the next meeting!

As a socially awkward person who quickly fell out of practice at talking to people who aren’t my partner or my baby, a Silent Book Club is truly my dream come true. You have the opportunity to make friends and chat about books as much as you’d like to, but you can also just sit and read and simply share space. No pressure to read the same book and prepare talking points, and no pressure to socialize more than you’re prepared for.

All in all, this week was truly…