Photo: The owners of The Next Chapters Bookhouse inside the shop's Booktique. Courtesy of the owners.
The last time this paper wrote about The Next Chapters Bookhouse, in June, it was a parking calculation. Four spaces needed, eight already approved, one voice vote, and a table of commissioners predicting the place was going to be popular.
It opened on Thursday, Sept. 3, exactly the day the owners had promised the commission, and according to founders Paul and Lana, there were early birds waiting at the doors when they unlocked them. Two weeks in, people have been coming through all day for a coffee and a browse, and the weather has been good enough that they have been carrying their drinks out to the seating by the river.
Commissioners: 1. Skeptics: 0.
What is in there
Used books in every genre, shelved by the categories people actually browse by, in a room the owners call the Booktique. Then the part that will get your money on the way out: literary-themed wallets, puzzles, art-inspired notebooks and journals, bookshelf decor, shop merchandise, and what the owners describe as their signature felt mice friends. The Mercury has no further information on the mice and has decided to let that stand as its own reason to visit.
The cafe windows look out at the river. Coffee, tea, soft drinks, pastries, and Adirondack chairs outside if you would rather read in the sun. In June the owners told the zoning commission the coffee was not really the point. "We're the experience," one of them said, "not so much the coffee shop." That is still the pitch, and two weeks of steady browsing suggests the town agreed to it.
Hours: closed Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Some events run later.
Curbside service, for a bookstore
Here is the detail that ought to be better known. The shop is on the second floor, up a flight of stairs, and if you would rather not climb them, you do not have to. Call 860.407.6221, tell them what you are after, and they will go find it, carry it down, and run your card at your car window with a tap-to-pay reader.
Curbside pickup for a used paperback. Try getting that from a website.
Saturday: a hummingbird, a storytime, and no ticket
The next thing on the calendar is the best argument for going. Co-owner Lana Van Valkenburgh has written and self-published a children's book, Honeydew and the Pink Scarf, about a tiny hummingbird whose pink scarf travels through the woods of Bliss spreading kindness one small act at a time. The shop is throwing its launch party on Saturday, Sept. 26, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., with a storytime at 9:30 read by Van Valkenburgh herself and the celebration running through the rest of open hours. Free, no ticket, bring a kid.
Three more events follow before Halloween, all on the shop's own calendar. Thursday, Sept. 24, 10 to 11 a.m., a pop-up called Reading with Janaya. Sunday, Sept. 27, 3:30 to 5 p.m., the author Holly Payne-Strange reads from and signs her new fantasy novel, The Queen's Mistress, ticketed online or at the counter. Thursday, Oct. 22, 7 to 9 p.m., the romance author Kaye Kennedy signs Pumpkin Spice & Prophecies and then, in the shop's own words, takes the stage for a live gallery-style mediumship session, which is a sentence this paper is delighted to print. Also ticketed.
Two book clubs meet monthly, Chapter One on second Thursdays and Chapter Two on third, which puts the next two on Oct. 8 and Oct. 15.
Bring your old paperbacks, book the room, sell your stuff
Three more things worth knowing. They take used-book donations, including through a drop box by the side entrance near the red stairs, and they send a thank-you gift to anyone who tells them a donation landed. They rent the riverfront lounge and the cafe out for small gatherings, up to 10 people in one and 18 in the other, which is a genuinely charming place to put a baby shower. And they have standing invitations out to two groups: local authors who want to book a reading, and local vendors who want to sell during open hours.
In June this paper argued that a used bookstore is news because the budget votes and school board meetings the Mercury covers all quietly assume a public that still reads, and a habit like that has to live somewhere. As of two weeks ago it lives on the second floor of 218 River Road in Unionville, Wednesday through Sunday, coffee in hand, mice included.
This coverage is supported by Farmington Storage, 155 Scott Swamp Road, the only storage facility in Connecticut with Museum air. A secondhand novel has already outlived one owner, one shelf and at least one move, which is more than most of what any of us keep. Farmington Storage holds the rest of it at institutional grade. 860.777.4001 📦
Jack Beckett has covered Farmington's Planning and Zoning Commission long enough to know that a parking-space calculation is sometimes a bookstore in disguise. He is on his second coffee and intends to ask about the mice. ☕
The Farmington Mercury covers the town nobody else is covering: the zoning meeting that ran late, the police log that is technically public record but that you would never find unless somebody typed it up, the board of education vote that decides what your kids read next year. And the happier end of the same beat, which is a business that cleared its approvals and actually opened. We publish slowly and without apology. By the time we arrive, the dust has settled and the shelves are full. Find us at farmingtonmercury.com and tell your neighbors. #WeAreFarmington 📰