The story of a bookstore can be a captivating tale that sometimes begins again in a new home. Bookends & Beginnings started a new chapter on Saturday, with a ribbon-cutting and grand opening event in their new location at 1620 Orrington Avenue in Evanston.
Owner and founder, Nina Barrett says, after eight years in the Evanston alley space that once housed the iconic Bookman’s Alley, increasing rent costs made it necessary for Bookends & Beginnings to navigate to a new location in order to stay in business.
The shop temporarily moved in 2021 during the pandemic to a storefront at 1716 Sherman Avenue, where they remained for about a year, but business was expanding and they needed more space.
“We are so happy that this beloved business is reopening,” said Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, who took part in Saturday’s ribbon-cutting event. “The shop in this new location, in the historic Hahn Building near Fountain Square, will provide increased visibility and add more vitality to the street.”
“If Bookends & Beginnings was a person, she’d be like Annie Hall,” Barrett said, “quirky and mismatched but somehow always beautiful.”
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Instead of being bombarded by the Barnes & Noble style of limitless access to every book ever written, Barrett describes her store’s selection as curated and intimate with genres ranging from; general fiction, science fiction, mystery, romance. history, social science, psychology, LGBTQ+, and more, with nonfiction offerings highlighted by a robust cookbook section.
A graduate of the Medill School of Journalism, Barrett is also a writer and author of books that include; I Wish Someone Had Told Me, The Playgroup: Three Women Contend With the Myths of Motherhood, The Girls: A True Story of Lifelong Friendship, and most recently, The Leopold and Loeb Files: An Intimate Look at One of America’s Most Infamous Crimes.
According to the store’s website, Bookends & Beginnings has earned national recognition for bringing a quirky brand of literary charm to the heart of Evanston. The store has appeared on the Thrillist list of 10 Woman-Owned Bookstores Across the U.S. and on the Mental Floss list of 16 Must-Visit Indie Bookstores Owned by Writers. Barrett has also been an outspoken critic of Amazon’s harm to bookstores and brick-and-mortar retail stores in general.
Barrett says her hope for the store’s future is that it will become home to Evanston’s literary community — now with expanded hours and a dedicated event space — she plans to host readings and other events that showcase the work of local authors.
Lauren Allison of Evanston attended Saturday’s reopening, and said that she has been a fan of Bookends & Beginnings since its opening in 2014.
“The new store is magical, and everything is brand new, so it doesn’t yet have the smell of old books that we love, but already it gives you the feeling that you have entered a bookshop wonderland,” Allison said.
Gina Grillo is a freelance reporter with Pioneer Press.