May Schedule

In general, hours for May will be Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; however, the shop will be closed Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, May 19, 20, 21 while I’m out of town, then open again Friday and Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. 

This Saturday!

 

Dog Ears Books will be open 

from 11 a.m. (or earlier) 

until (at least) 5 p.m.

Come see what's new 

since your last visit.

BOOKSTORE PLAN for the week of Feb. 24 – March 1, 2025

Dog Ears Books will be OPEN on Monday (usually, in winter, a day we’re closed), from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

 

CLOSED on Tuesday (probably!)

 

OPEN Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

 

OPEN Thursday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

 

OPEN Friday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., BUT NOT TAKING CREDIT OR DEBIT CARDS OR APPLE PAY OR ANY OF THAT. IT WILL BE A CASH-ONLY DAY. We welcome your support of local business on a day we hope you will be joining the boycott of big box stores, online shopping, and credit card use. CASH IN LOCAL BUSINESSES! THANK YOU!!!

 

OPEN Saturday, March 1, from 11 a.m. until perhaps as late as 5 p.m., depending on weather and whether or not people are shopping in Northport.

Coming Soon --and I'm Excited!

Monday, April 22 - Earth Day

 

Saturday, April 27 - Indie Bookstore Day

Mon., 4/22. Not usually open on Mondays, the bookstore in Northport will be open for Earth Day 2024, with beautiful new canvas book bags ($12) in honor of this year's Earth Day theme, "Planet vs. Plastics." 

Sat., 4/27. The new book bags will be equally appropriate on the following Saturday, Indie Bookstore Day (which I've missed by being out-of-state the past few years, but this year I'll be here), and every day into the future!  

Plan to celebrate these happy days with us, please. And thank you!

New, Restocked, and Looking Forward

 

Not only is it late September, but this coming Saturday is Leelanau UnCaged, Northport's big, beautiful annual street fair. This year BATA (Bay Area Transit Authority) is offering FREE BUS RIDES to Northport from Traverse City! And at 4 p.m. on Saturday, poets Fleda Brown and Michael Delp will give readings at the bookstore (a free event, as is the day's music and entrance to UnCaged itself), so please plan to stop by. The weather forecast is for yet another gorgeous Northern Michigan fall day.

Dog Ears Books will be open all afternoon on Saturday until at least 6 p.m. Our dedicated fall hours, remember, are Wednesday through Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (with Monday and Tuesday as "by chance or appointment" days), closed on Sundays. And with each passing week, I am ordering new books for the store, restocking popular local offerings as well as bringing in the sometimes unexpected. 

 Definitely here through October. Winter is still up in the air....

Bookstore Highlights: Sure-Fire Summer Hits

A couple books have been bestsellers ever since they first appeared. Trails of M-22 is one such (I’m glad to note that the author doesn’t stop at the top of the M-22 loop but comes through Northport and clear up to the lighthouse), and another is the Lake Michigan Rock Picker’s Guide.

Suttons Bay, Peshawbestown, and Bingham Shores, the second of Kathleen Firestone’s monumental “Meet Me at the Dock” trilogy, is here now, and you won’t want to miss it.  Perfect for the local coffee table to get visitors reading about the area's history.

The public clamoring for another Robert Underhill murder mystery is in luck this summer: Bob's new novel, One Cold Coffee, is here now!

Anne-Marie Oomen’s Michigan Notable As Long As I Know You: The Mom Book, is her latest memoir, and I have a few signed copies on hand, along with two signed copies of an older Oomen memoir, Pulling Down the Barn. 

The first speaker in this year’s Summer Author Series sponsored by the Leelanau Township Friends of the Library is Dave Dempsey, and I have his Great Lakes for Sale now, ahead of his presentation at the Willowbrook, which will be July 11 at 7 p.m.

Dr. Bill Blair, of the Johns Hopkins University Space Telescope Science Institute, Department of Physics & Astronomy, is this year’s speaker in the Belko Peace Lecture series at Trinity Church. Dr. Blair, whose presentation will take place on Saturday, July 29, at 7 p.m. at Trinity, recommends Dacher Keltner’s Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.  

Finally, just in time for July 4^th, I have Amanda Gorman’s inauguration poem, The Hill We Climb. Not banned in Northport!!!

These are but a small taste of the treasures, new and used, awaiting you at Dog Ears Books, 106 Waukazoo Street in Northport, celebrating its 30^th anniversary this July. I’ll be sharing more book news throughout the season. For meandering thoughts on books, language, and my Up North world, see “Books in Northport”; for images that catch my eye, “A Shot in the Light”; and for random rants and musings from your Up North bookseller, “Lacking a Clear Focus.”

 

Summer bookstore hours are posted here on this blog. 

Happy 4^th, everyone! There will be a reading of the Declaration of Independence on the post office steps in Northport at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, the 4th of July.

Bookstore Hours, Summer 2023

 DOG EARS BOOKS

1993-2023

Celebrating 30 years!

106 Waukazoo St., Northport, MI

 

Summer Hours 2023

 

Monday: By chance or appointment

 

Tuesday: 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. (or later)

 

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday:

11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

 

Sunday: CLOSED

 

 

 

Please note:

 

When the bookstore is open,

David Grath gallery 

(accessible from inside bookstore)

is also open.

Looking Ahead to 30! Yes, THIRTY!

Waukazoo Street, 1993

 

As my annual seasonal retirement from bookselling begins for 2022-2023, my bookstore buttoned up and closed for the winter, already I wonder what next winter will bring. I know, however, what next summer will bring: the 30^th anniversary of Dog Ears Books and my 30^th anniversary as a bookseller Up North. Incredible!

 

When my husband and I rented the little sheds on Waukazoo Street in 1993 (now long gone, along with Woody’s Settling Inn next door, also remembered fondly, for its old sign, as Hotel Bar), little did either of us imagine that I would still be selling books 30 years later. That first summer what we had for stock was the overflow of our combined personal libraries, all the books we decided we would probably never re-read. (At home, the bookshelves were still full, but we had eliminated boxes full of additional books stacked on the floor.) Our little starter bookshop experiment was so well received, however, that we attended the Interlochen Public Library book sale that summer and bought more used books for the shop. It wasn’t a yard sale. It was a business. Run by a couple with little business sense or experience but a deep love of books.

 

That was the beginning. As for the name, my husband came up with it. I had adopted a little mutt in the spring, and we were selling only used books that first year, so Dog Ears was a natural. Although if we had been able to look ahead 30 years, we might have come up with something more dignified, still – as David observed that first summer, overhearing people murmuring as they walked by -- “People love to say the name.” Dog Ears, Dog Ears, Dog Ears....

Nikki in her old age, 2007

 

I remember my delight when someone would walk through the door and ask, “Do you have a poetry section?” Yes, I do! So glad you asked!

 

Many of you who have become lasting friends I met that first year: Julia was one of several who asked for poetry. Mark bought a Simenon novel. George chose The Last Time I Saw Paris, one of my all-time favorite books.

 

Those first years were trial by fire. So much to learn! At first, it was only used books, our own, but how did one tell a first edition, what was the value of a dust jacket, and what books were worthy of shelf space, when shelf space is limited? (And shelf space is always limited!) Old books are like violins, I tell people now: age alone does not equal value. There must still exist a market for the author’s works. And then – condition, condition, condition!

 

Oh, the challenges of those early years! Not only learning the market but the daily trial, difficult for a shy, bookish introvert, of having to greet and converse with strangers! Gradually – it took me about five years – I realized that most other people feel shy, too, and that when they come into what they perceive as my space, it’s up to me to put them at ease. In that way, my bookstore helped me grow as a person.

 

A few years into the game, after sending people day after day to other bookstores when they wanted field guides I didn’t have in stock, it occurred to me to add new books to the mix. Those were the days of Partners Book Distributing, and it was always a joy to phone in an order from those friendly people. They stocked the nature field guides I initially wanted, and a treasure trove of Michigan and Great Lakes titles, fiction and nonfiction and illustrated children’s books. I was one of their happy “partners” for years and still miss them.

 

Not to get too deeply into reminiscence, however – I’ll save some of that for next year -- eventually, like other booksellers who fell into this strange, somewhat marginal career more by happenstance than by plan, as years went by I seemed to have found my niche. I also see, looking back, that my husband’s career as a working artist and my work as a bookseller dovetailed into a very rich life for the two of us, giving us opportunities to meet interesting people from all over the country, even the world, who appreciated art and books.

 

And so, now, as I keep repeating -- more out of astonishment than boastfulness, believe me! -- next July will mark 30 years of that little bookshop born one summer in a modest shed. It took a village but more than a village. It took a willing daily partner (“a donkey for literature,” he used to call himself, carrying boxes of books for me -- while I called myself a "handmaid to the arts" as I helped shlep large paintings), a long list of marvelous Michigan authors, and the material support of local and visiting customers, year after year, buying both new and used books in my shop. My heartfelt thanks to you all for helping keep this dream alive!

 

I’m already thinking about how to celebrate the 30-year mark of Dog Ears Books, and I have a couple of ideas, but if my customers have suggestions for me, too, I will be happy to hear them. Please share! And again, thank you!

Book pup Sarah, 2008

Seasonal Closing

 

October is the last month of business for Dog Ears this year!

The bookstore closing is only seasonal, not permanent. I will be back before next Memorial Day to celebrate my 30th year in business (1993-2023), but at the end of this October 2022 I'll be closing until May 2023 for my seasonal retirement. I plan to remain in contact over the winter through my main blog, Books in Northport.

Because not everything on my to-do list can be accomplished on Sundays and Mondays, starting next week the bookstore and gallery will only be open Wednesdays through Sundays, 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. That is, Wednesday, Oct. 19, through Saturday, Oct. 22, and then Wednesday, Oct. 26, through Saturday, Oct. 29.

Thank you for 29 years of bookselling and a gratifying 2022 season. I look forward to celebrating three decades next summer in Northport. 

Closed -- for the Season Only!

 

Summer and fall 2021 -- what a great business season in Northport, not only for books but also for paintings, and we thank our customers and clients, friends all, for rewarding our passions and endeavors with their patronage. Although November has been (until this morning's hard frost and despite recent snow that preceded frost by about a week) exceptionally mild, we are at least partially launched into our seasonal retirement. Not yet on the road but catching up on odds and ends of business, housework, home projects, and yard work.

We look forward already to seeing you again in Northport when we re-open, sometime in May of 2022. Again, thank you so much for contributing to our successful season!

It Isn’t Rocket Science

Here until the rest of the month

Bookselling, my calling in life, doesn’t require knowledge of higher mathematics, let alone astrophysics, but there are crucial numbers involved in the survival of any bookstore, numbers that can also be called simply “the bottom line.” A recent article in the weekly Northern Express relayed the sad news that Traverse City’s 50-year-old Bookie Joint on Union Street is closing – not due to the owner’s desire for retirement but because the dreaded bottom line figure wasn’t panning out. 

Sad news!

“I was robbing Peter to pay Paul,” said the current owner, who bought the business fifteen years ago. “And Peter was going broke.”

 

The 50-year mark is one I don’t expect to see for myself (as a bookstore owner), but the 30-year mark is only two years away and very do-able, I think. At times in the past I’ve attributed my business success (survival, I suppose would be the more modest word) to stubbornness, but stubbornness alone wouldn’t have kept the door open for the past 28 years. 

People buying books in the bookstore – that is the essential ingredient for keeping a bookstore alive. Not mere compliments or wishes of “good luck” from browsers as they walk out the door. People buying books. That keeps a bookstore in business. 

The end of October is coming up fast, and Saturday, October 30, will be the last day of my 2021 season – but we will be back again in May of 2022 because of all our dear, wonderful, loyal book-buying customers! So please, all of you, know that I am grateful beyond my puny words for your patronage. Still --

 

Thank you 

from the bottom of my heart 

for a wonderful 2021 bookstore season!!!

Bookstore Plan for the Remainder of June

Please note: The space for leaving comments looks different on this blog suddenly, and I am unable to leave or reply to a comment. The answer to Dawn's question (in the one comment visible below) is that I am happy to take and fill mail orders. Thank you!

(1) Each Monday I’ll process new book orders. (Many ordered yesterday are on back-order, due to current demand.) Get your title or list of titles to me by Saturday, please. The phone at the shop is working, and I'll be in most days for a few hours to check messages. E-mail or Facebook messages also work.

(2) As requested books arrive, I’ll notify customers who can then come by the shop for pickup. 

(3) Customers picking up special orders may also shop books in stock. 

(4) I will not, however, be open for general walk-in traffic this month. We'll see how July looks when we're closer to it.

Recap: If you let me know what you want me to order by Saturday, I’ll place my order on Monday and generally will have books by the end of the same week – unless you ask for something that is in high demand and currently out-of-stock at the distributor warehouse.

One more note: Please do not bring boxes of donations, as you can see from the photo above that we are overstocked with used books at present and will soon have to find room for new books, as well. And there is a lot of cleaning to do before the OPEN flag can go out.

Thank you for your loyalty and your patience. Stay safe, everyone!