Hearthside Books and Toys is ranked eighth in this year’s “10 Best Independent Bookstores,” according to USA Today’s annual Readers’ Choice Awards.
The announcement Wednesday came as a surprise to Olga Lijo Serans, owner of Hearthside’s two Juneau stores since 2022. Among the bookstores Hearthside topped were The Ripped Bodice in Brooklyn, New York, that finished 10th and Red Emma’s in Baltimore, Maryland, that finished ninth.
“I was amused because I didn’t believe we were really going to make it into the top 10,” she told the Empire in an interview Wednesday evening.
Serans, said she was at home when an employee shared the news with her Wednesday morning. She said congratulations from others came quickly.
“A neighbor who was the first thing I saw when I took the dog out, it was the first thing out of their mouths — ‘Congratulations,’” she said.
Hearthside was among 20 contenders nationwide in the reader’s poll that lasted 28 days and ended on June 2. Among the other contenders singled out by Serans as famous were Strand Book Store in New York City and City Lights in San Francisco — with Hearthside topping both of them.
“Hearthside Books and Toys has been a community mainstay since 1975,” the newspaper notes in its list of winners. “With two locations and a large selection of books in every genre, Hearthside Books and Toys has something for every book lover. The store is committed to the local community, and regularly highlights Alaska-based authors, hosting a First Friday monthly series that features local poets and writers. Hearthside has a long history of philanthropy and collects more than 1,000 books annually for the African Library Project, an organization that builds community libraries across underserved communities in Africa.”
Serans, who last month said it was an honor simply to be on the same list of contenders as such stores, said she can envision a future where Hearthside is held in similar esteem by people elsewhere.
“There is a certain population that loves independent bookstores,” she said. “We do have many people who talk aloud about how they love to see a fully independent bookstore, so if your brand name is out there it will be more searched for and people will try to visit.”
One indicator of the strong support Hearthside already has is how it managed to finish in the top 10 despite being in an isolated community of about 30,000 compared to some other contenders in metropolitan areas with several million people, Serans said.
“I would just like to say thank you to all of the people in Juneau who voted for us,” she said. “There were a number of people who voted that I didn’t know at all.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
