Hello, and welcome. Open Book is a small independent bookstore with a coffee bar in the back, a couple of couches that have seen better days, a resident cat named Chapter, and a corkboard by the door that is probably the most-read publication in the neighborhood. We are two owners, Paula and Jess, and a handful of wonderful part-timers, and we have been on this corner since the spring of 1993, when the space was a shoe repair shop and the floor still smelled like polish.

We carry new books, a wall of used paperbacks, magazines, cards and not much else. We are a general bookstore with a big heart for gay and lesbian writing, women's writing, poetry and the kind of novels you press on your friends. If we don't have it we will get it, usually in a week. If you're not sure what you want, tell us the last three books you loved and give us ten minutes.

Everybody is welcome here. We mean everybody. Come as you are, stay as long as you like, and the couch by the window is yours if you get there first.

The coffee bar opens with the store and closes half an hour before it. We are closed Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day, and we open at noon on New Year's Day, assuming the lights still work (we have been told they will, and we have candles either way).

All events are free and take place in the back room by the coffee bar, unless we say otherwise. Readings start at 7:30 p.m. and the author is usually happy to sign afterward. We move the couches; come early if you want a soft seat.

Added Sept. 22: the Oct. 16 mystery reading has moved from 7:30 to 8 p.m. so Marcus can make his train.

Tuesdays at 7 in the back room. One book a month, discussed over four Tuesdays: the first Tuesday we start it, the last Tuesday we finish it, and in between we argue. Anywhere from six to twenty people show up. You don't have to have finished the book. You don't have to have started the book. You do have to be nice about other people's opinions of the book. Club members get 10% off the month's pick.

October: Armistead Maupin, Tales of the City. Half of you have read it already; read it again, it's better than you remember.
November: Toni Morrison, Beloved. Start early. It rewards the effort.
December: Something short and funny, to be voted on in November. Nominations at the counter.

Six stools, four little tables and the two couches. We roast nothing ourselves; the beans come from a roaster across town and we are not too proud to say so. Refills on drip coffee are free if you're reading.

Soy milk available, no charge. Mugs for here, paper for to go; bring your own mug and take a quarter off.

The corkboard by the door is free to anyone with a flyer, a card or a lost-cat notice: roommates wanted, support groups, bands, yard sales, the softball league schedule, the choir, the Sunday potluck, somebody's grandmother's piano for sale. We clear it the first of each month, so re-post if your thing is still going. Please keep flyers to letter size or smaller, and please don't cover anyone else's.

The back room is free for community groups to meet in on evenings when we don't have an event, and on weekday mornings. It seats about twenty-five in folding chairs and it comes with the coffee bar next door. Right now it's home to a writers' group on Monday nights, a parents' group on Wednesday mornings, a twelve-step group on Thursday nights and a knitting circle on Saturday mornings that we suspect is really a gossip circle with yarn. To reserve a night or morning, e-mail us or ask at the counter. We only ask that your group be open to anyone who wants to come, and that you put the chairs back.

Not the newest books, just the ones we keep handing people. The shelf by the register has them with little handwritten cards; these are the cards, more or less.

Fiction
• James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room. Paula's desert island book. Short, and every sentence earns its place.
• E. M. Forster, Maurice. Written in 1913, published in 1971, and it has a happy ending, which he insisted on.
• Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle. Still funny, still fearless, still on the shelf after twenty-six years.
• Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina. Hard going and worth every page.
• Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. Better than the movie, and the movie was pretty good.
• Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues. We sell more copies of this than anything else in the store, year in and year out.

Nonfiction
• Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On. If you were there you'll remember; if you weren't, you need to know.
• Paul Monette, Becoming a Man. A memoir that reads like a hand on your shoulder.
• Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider. Essays. Jess rereads it every year and finds something new.

Poetry (the Sunday crowd's shelf)
• Frank O'Hara, Lunch Poems. Fits in a pocket, which is the idea.
• Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language.
• Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems. The one to start with if you think you don't like poetry.

Mystery
• Sue Grafton, "A" Is for Alibi. Start at A. She's up to N now and you have a lot of good nights ahead of you.
• Tony Hillerman, Dance Hall of the Dead. Our mystery regulars fight over which is his best; this one wins the most fights.

Plays
• Tony Kushner, Angels in America. Both parts. Read it aloud with friends if you can; it's what it's for.

Kitchen
• Mollie Katzen, The Moosewood Cookbook. The hand-lettered one. Half the potlucks in this neighborhood come out of it.
• The Joy of Cooking. Because someone in every household should own it.

Anything in print, we can order, and most things arrive in five to ten days. E-mail us the title and author (the ISBN if you have it, but don't worry if you don't), and we will e-mail you back with the price and when to expect it. No deposit for orders under $50. We'll hold it at the counter for two weeks after it comes in, and if you ask, we'll keep the order between us; a lot of people order their first gay or lesbian book this way, and we understand exactly why.

We also keep a wish-list notebook at the register. Write down a book you want that we don't stock, and if three people ask for it, we start carrying it. This is how we ended up with a whole shelf of books about knitting.

Paula worked in a big chain bookstore for six years and Jess ran the coffee cart outside it. We used to talk, on breaks, about what a bookstore could be if it were the size of a living room and run by people who lived in the neighborhood. In 1993 we borrowed money from three relatives and a bank that took a chance on us, signed a lease on a shoe repair shop, painted for two weeks straight and opened on a rainy Saturday in April with about 1,500 books and one espresso machine that Jess still swears at. We are still here, which in this business is the whole trick. Thank you, Lakeside.

Chapter, the cat, arrived in 1996 through the back door and has not left. He sleeps in the window in the mornings, on the mystery shelf in the afternoons, and on whoever is in the good couch in the evenings. He does not like to be picked up. He does like the oatmeal cookies, and no, you may not give him any.