A gift guide for book lovers, from indie Oakland booksellers

There’s one thing magical concerning the Workers Picks shelf at an impartial bookstore. The character within the handwriting, the thrill of listening to from an avid reader why a specific quantity resonated with them a lot. This reward information is obtainable in that spirit.

As you dig into your vacation buying, you would select to go surfing and make Jeff Bezos a tiny bit richer. Or you would cease by one in all Oakland’s many impartial bookstores, vibrant locations the place you may chat with an skilled bookseller, uncover an version signed by an area writer, and help the form of establishments that make Oakland thrive.

We requested each impartial Oakland bookseller that sells new books what they’d recommend for individuals in your reward listing, no matter style or when the e-book got here out. A lot of them generously responded — they usually beneficial books they maintain in inventory, so that you received’t make a visit in useless. We requested them to select at the least one e-book by an Oakland writer, nevertheless they outline that.

We’ve labeled their picks roughly by age group and style that will help you store for the family and friends in your listing, however after all books communicate to us in mysterious methods, and we will fall in love with a e-book at any age, and in any model.

So browse essentially the most sprawling Oakland-made employees picks listing ever, select an overcast afternoon, and make your option to one of many City’s native bookshops, whether or not it’s 50 years outdated, new to the city, or — in a single case — isn’t precisely a store in any respect.

Clio’s Books

353 Grand Ave.
Mon-Fri, 4-11; Sat-Solar, 11-11

Is it your favourite cocktail bar that sells books, or your favourite bookseller that serves drinks? Clio’s Books, the two-year-old bookstore on the fringe of Lakeside Park, organizes its 10,000-plus new and used books chronologically, which invitations immersive shopping; hosts a variety of e-book teams, occasions, and readings; and serves a imply Negroni.

Replaceable You
By Mary Roach
Oakland author. Sensible, rigorous, accessible science written in frequent vernacular. You study issues if you learn Roach’s books.

D’Aulaire’s Greek Myths
For center grades. You get Hesiod’s mythology in a matter of pages, with illustrations. The mix of writing and illustration ensures that the fabric goes into your deep reminiscence. It is a e-book that anybody who learn as a baby remembers as an grownup.

Ceremony
By Leslie Marmon Silko
Fiction. A novel that can change your understanding of the sacred and disclose to you the ability of language to entry it. It can additionally break your coronary heart.

The Fireplace Subsequent Time
By James Baldwin
Essays. A searing examination of American racism that’s foundational to any understanding of up to date relations — and never least as a result of Baldwin writes from a basic place of affection.

The Magus
By John Fowles
Thriller. A psychological thriller set on a Greek island within the Fifties that includes a masque, a sport, and a magician. Not for the faint of coronary heart or the weak of thoughts; totally enchanting and devastatingly trustworthy.

Marcus Books

3900 Martin L. King Jr. Means
Mon-Sat, 10-6; Solar 12-4

“An impartial bookstore is one the place the proprietor is behind the counter,” Blanche Richardson informed us one latest Saturday night. And there she was, the proprietor of Marcus Books, the oldest Black-owned bookstore in the US, alongside together with her daughter Cherysse Calhoun, who between the 2 of them appeared to have learn each e-book they carry. Based in 1960 in San Francisco by Dr. Raye Richardson, an enormous of Black Research at San Francisco State and her husband Julian Richardson, the bookstore shortly grew to become a cultural touchstone, the form of place Malcolm X stopped by, and the place Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, and Patti LaBelle gave readings.

The Women Who Grew Huge
By Leila Mottley
Oakland author. It is a superbly written story about younger moms, friendship, betrayal, and every little thing in between. You’ll be captivated by the poetic prose. Mottley was Oakland’s Youth Poet Laureate for 2018.

Scammer
By Tiffany Jackson
For younger adults. This newest YA novel by Tiffany Jackson is stuffed with drama, emotion, errors, and development — an important story for all ages.

Black AF Historical past
By Michael Harriot
Historical past. The subtitle of this e-book is “The Un-Whitewashed Story of America,” which says lots. “Black AF Historical past” is stuffed with reality and humor, making it extremely readable. This e-book will train you belongings you didn’t study in class.

Grey Daybreak
By Walter Mosley
Crime fiction. That is one other Simple Rawlins journey written in Mosley’s extraordinary prose. Mosley’s dialogue takes you again to Los Angeles within the Nineteen Seventies and drops you in the course of one other Rawlins riddle.

How I Know White Folks Are Loopy and Different Tales
By Dr. Jonathan Lassiter
Essays. This e-book breaks down the results of white ideology on Black sufferers, written from the angle of a Black homosexual psychologist. Lassiter shares his frustrations, analysis, and the significance of BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and disabled communities being represented in psychology practices.

Tally Ho! Books

3941 Piedmont Ave.
Tue-Sat, 10-7; Solar-Mon, 10-6

Oakland’s latest bookstore, the woman-owned Tally Ho! Books, opened within the former Owl & Co. house final yr. A labor of affection by two associates, Lilah Hinde and Bianca Salaverry, who had labored collectively at Oakland’s Pegasus Books, the brand new store is filled with a rigorously curated assortment of recent and used books from a bookselling group dedicated to fostering neighborhood.

The Giveaway: The Clay Blackburn Story
By Owen Hill
Crime fiction. Oakland author. Hill’s crime fiction is whip-smart, fashionable, subversive, hilarious, and simply dripping with East Bay colour, tradition, and landmarks. Candy and bitter like an ideal Negroni, Hill has invented a brand new form of East Bay Noir — the fog rolls in late, the golden afternoon glow one way or the other each luxurious and ominous within the class conflict that by no means sleeps.

Billie Jean Peat, Athlete
By Andrea Beaty, illustrated by David Roberts
For youngsters. This e-book is a uncommon celebration of the center youngster discovering their ardour. Billie Jean Peat doesn’t fairly slot in together with her musical household — possibly basketball is the place she’ll shine!

Mama’s Magnificent Dancing Plantitas
By Jesús Trejo, illustrated by Eliza Kinkz 
For youngsters. Nice e-book for the rapscallion chaos monkey in your life! Jesús is a well-meaning destructo-bot! 

The Orange Eats Creeps
By Grace Krilanovich 
Horror. A fever nightmare, a Misplaced Boys for an even-more-truly-lost-generation, a teenage horror story of the Pacific Northwest. 

Flights
By Olga Tokarczuk
Quick tales. Flights completely emulates the sonder feeling of transient glimpses of different individuals’s lives within the airport terminal — transient, bewildering, and fascinating. Such a scrumptious learn! 

Sistah Scifi

At Chapter 510, 546 ninth St.
Wed-Sat, 11-5

Sistah Scifi, the nation’s first Black-owned bookseller centered on science fiction and fantasy, distributes its books in areas in Oakland and Seattle by merchandising machines. It’s a mixture of retro and futuristic that simply is smart. Discover one now at Chapter 510.

To Boldly Go: How Nichelle Nichols and Star Trek Helped Advance Civil Rights
By Angela Dalton
For youngsters. Oakland author. A vibrant tribute to Nichelle Nichols, whose position as Lieutenant Uhura shattered boundaries and redefined illustration in sci-fi. This e-book superbly captures how creativeness on display helped encourage real-world change.

Sheine Lende: A prequel to Elatsoe
By Darcie Little Badger
For younger adults. Wealthy in Lipan Apache storytelling and coronary heart, this prequel expands Little Badger’s world with thriller, magic, and generational love. It’s a robust reminder of how Indigenous futures are deeply rooted in ancestral power.

Wildseed Witch, Ebook 1
By Marti Dumas
For center grades. A fascinating coming-of-age story that blends magic with fashionable Black girlhood. Dumas delivers humor, coronary heart, and a splash of historical past as her younger heroine learns that energy, magical or in any other case, all the time comes with duty. Impressed by Octavia E. Butler’s “Wildseed.”

Sky Stuffed with Elephants
By Cebo Campbell
Speculative fiction. This e-book begins in a close to future the place each white particular person has drowned. Within the aftermath, Charlie receives a mysterious cellphone name from the biracial daughter he by no means knew he had. The 2 embark on a journey — from a post-capitalist airport in Chicago to a kingdom within the coronary heart of Alabama — that’s each joyful and remorseful. Campbell’s storytelling is poetry in movement; tender, haunting, and unafraid to dig deep into what it means to be Black.

African Ghost Quick Tales
Edited by Chinelo Onwualu
Gothic fantasy. With a foreword by Nuzo Onoh, the Queen of African Horror, this masterful anthology options up to date authors from throughout the African diaspora exploring “the deep-seated supernatural aspect in African storytelling.” This beautiful hardcover version from Flametree Publishing is gold and silver foil stamped and ideal for vacation gifting. 

Moments Co-op

410 thirteenth St.
Fri-Sat 12-6

Moments is a volunteer-run cooperative bookstore and neighborhood house that carries a curated choice of new and used books and zines by BIPOC and LGBTQ+ authors and hosts readings, movie screenings, and different actions. The co-op is an intentional secure house the place masks are required.

Heirloom
By Ashia Ajani
Oakland author. Poetry. A nourishing debut poetry e-book exploring the connection of Blackness and ecological survival.

Energy Born of Goals: My Story is Palestine
By Mohammad Sabaaneh
For younger adults. This extremely stunning graphic novel is a good way to study extra concerning the Palestinian battle for liberation.

Cook dinner Like Your Ancestors
By Mariah-Rose Marie
Cookbook. An accessible, stunning, and considerate strategy to a cookbook!

East Bay Booksellers

6022 School Ave.
Mon-Sat 11-7, Solar 11-6

East Bay Booksellers says it’s dedicated to being a cultural heart for Oakland and supporting the delicate ecology of creativity right here. The love was returned when the bookstore caught fireplace a yr and a half in the past and it appeared like your complete East Bay literary neighborhood rallied to assist them rebuild. They’ve been up and operating at their new location since final November.

We Survived the Evening
By Julian Courageous Noisecat
Oakland author. Memoir. Manages to deftly and compellingly maintain heartbreak and hope concurrently, with out compromising the depth of both. 

The Adventures of Cipollino
By Gianni Rodari
For center grades. Pure myth-making creativeness by a contemporary grasp. 

Pelican Youngster
By Pleasure Williams
Quick tales. There are unhappy writers, and there are humorous writers. And so few obtain a wedding between the 2 in such a means that it’s outright artwork. 

Ursula Okay. Le Guin: A Bigger Actuality
Poems, tales, essays. That is an absolute feast of a e-book for followers of the good Le Guin. Gorgeously packaged, it’s a treasure. 

America, América
By Greg Grandin
Historical past. Grandin is among the nice historians, and that is possible his masterpiece. A 500-year historical past of North and South America looks as if lots to chunk off, however he manages it exquisitely and readably. 

Pegasus Books

5560 School Ave.
Open every day, 10-8

With its three areas in Berkeley and Oakland, Pegasus has been an establishment within the East Bay for greater than 50 years. It shares an accessible and eclectic combine of recent, used, and remaindered books. 

Good Issues
By Samin Nosrat
Cookbook. Oakland author. Pegasus clients have been devouring Samin Norat’s e-book “Salt, Fats, Acid, Warmth” because it was first printed in 2017. “Good Issues” might be on each cookbook lover’s vacation want listing.

The First Cat in Area and the Child Pirate’s Revenge: A Graphic Novel
By Mac Barnett
For center grades. Oakland author. We’re so fortunate to have Barnett, the wildly proficient and prolific youngsters’s e-book writer, as an Oakland neighbor. We advocate this new launch, his fourth e-book within the “First Cat in Area” collection. It’s a humorous, fast-paced, foolish, full-color graphic novel for middle-grade readers.

Christmas on the Ladies’s Lodge
By Daniel Lavery
Oakland author. For appeal, humor and gift-ability, we’re recommending New York Instances–bestselling writer Lavery’s “Christmas on the Ladies’s Lodge,” which continues the “Ladies’s Lodge” collection concerning the interconnected lives of the witty and eccentric characters residing within the fictional Biedermeier Lodge for Ladies, in mid-’60s New York Metropolis.

Shot Prepared
By Stephen Curry
Memoir. Oakland author. A lot of Curry’s profession highlights happened when he lived in Oakland, together with three championships, two MVP awards, and numerous different record-breaking achievements. “Shot Prepared” recounts these days and divulges the main target and management it took to achieve these heights.

A Nice Good Place for Books

6120 La Salle Ave.
Tue-Sat, 10-6; Solar, 10-4; Mon, 11-4

An open, ethereal house with a packed schedule of readings, together with many younger grownup and youngsters’s e-book authors.

Household Fashion: Recollections of an American from Vietnam
By Thien Pham
For younger adults. Oakland author. It is a nice graphic novel about meals, household, and migration for any age. 

North for the Winter
By Bobby Podesta
For center grades. Oakland author. That is one other terrific graphic novel from an area creator and Pixar artist that includes flying reindeer, “Santa enterprise,” and a well-told story. 

Wreck
By Catherine Newman
Fiction. Newman is a gem. She writes with humor and depth and can make tears come out of your eyes — all sorts. We love her writing.

Aggie and the Ghost
By Matthew Forsythe 
For youngsters. This intelligent image e-book for ages 3 to eight is unassuming and wryly humorous. There are guidelines. There may be cheese. There may be sharing, and one epic sport of tic-tac-toe.