I recently found out I’m headed to California for a while this summer for work. three weeks away from my family, I”m not really looking forward to it. The silver lining? I may finally be able to visit what might be the quirkiest bookstore I’ve heard of. DIESEL Bookstore, with locations in Oakland, Malibu, Brentwood (and soon Larkspur!), they feature a huge selection of books, a creative staff who are passionate about books and the community, and the interest in trying new things and new projects. This is a place I gotta go!
John Evans of DIESEL Bookstore was kind enough to answer some questions for me. Good luck reading this interview and not adding this place to your bucket list.
What’s your favorite thing about being part of the independent bookstore community?
As for the bookstore community, my fellow booksellers at other bookstores are such a passionate, diverse, interesting, opinionated, engaged cast of characters, they provide me great pleasure and support. As far as the readers who support that community of independent bookstores — the most committed of them are of similar ilk: full of ideas, curious, interactive, good listeners and very articulate. Independent booksellers and independent readers are the same sorts of people and I’m glad to be able to work with all of them!Congrats on opening your fourth location, in Larkspur! What can you customers look forward to at your newest bookstore?
We will bring our thoughtful selection of titles, as we do at our other stores, along with experienced, well-trained booksellers who enthusiastically help people with their reading arcs, their explorations, their research. All in an aesthetic environment conducive to an appreciation of books, their value, and their life-changing potential.
Tell me a little about the Diesel experience. What might a first-time customer experience when they walk in the door?
Hopefully wonder! Wonder at how many great books are in such a modest space, at the selection and range of the titles, at the comfort and attractiveness of the store, and at the helpful expertise of the booksellers.
April is National Poetry Month, and in celebration you’ve done a YouTube video every day for a poem. Can you tell us more about this brilliant project? Is Youtube something you’d suggest other bookstores get involved with?
Yes, we’ve done this for a few years now — an amazing project that impresses me with the creativity, selection, and voices of our booksellers. As is typical of our store, someone has the seed idea and then everyone runs with it and the result always astounds the originator.
We post them on our site first and then they are posted to our YouTube channel, which is a great place to store, and make more widely available, all the videos we do. It’s nice to have them available there for people who can find them long after we created them.
And yes, I would encourage other stores to do more artful videos that reflect their creative engagement with books.
