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Shop Around the Corner: Story time, hand-written recommendations, and book clubs — the quaint Roscoe Books has it all

This article is courtesy of TheRealChicago.com

Roscoe Books
2142 W. Roscoe
www.RoscoeBooks.com

By Caitlin Meeter

Walking into Roscoe Books, you feel a sense of familiarity. It looks exactly like walking into a home’s library. Little notes (or rather, recommendations) scatter the tables and shelves of titles and tomes, providing a personal connection between proprietor and guest.

Currently on the recommendation list, you will find: the WW2 classic, Catch-22; the extraordinary look at the ordinary life, Stoner; the campy Irish Bond-man in The Mark and the Void; and Joan Didion’s masterful memoir of motherhood, The Year of Magical Thinking.

Little notes (or rather, recommendations) scatter the tables and shelves of titles and tomes, providing a personal connection between proprietor and guest.

Before serving up fictions, non-fictions, poetry and prose, Erika VanDam worked in marketing. Realizing her dreams really lay in spreading literary joy, she opened up Roscoe Books in November of 2014. Being a fellow Roscoe Villager herself, the store acts as a dedication and active community member to the family-orientated neighborhood.

Twice weekly, Roscoe Books offers a very popular story hour — the first Tuesday of the month integrates music and literature, giving it an extra ounce of fun for the kids. For the older kiddos, there are monthly book clubs that cover every genre. And adults can revisit the classics, only maybe this time with a sense of humor and a heightened sense of existential awareness.