This year we join bookstores around the country in celebrating the first annual National Bookstore Day, a day devoted to celebrating bookselling and the vibrant culture of bookstores.

So we decided to invite booksellers (buyers, owners, managers) from other So Cal bookstores to a unique "meet and greet" reception and they'll bring info about their stores. You can say hello to old friends from other bookstores and learn about others.

And to highlight the publication of the lovely new book, Art of the Bookstore: The Bookstore Paintings of Gibbs Smith, in which a number of these stores are featured, they will sign copies of the book.

At press time, the indie bookstores being represented so far are Skylight Books, Book Soup, Metropolis Books, Portrait of a Bookstore, StoriesLA, Chaucer's in Santa Barbara, as well as 2 legendary indies which are now closed -- Doug Dutton of Dutton's Brentwood and Adele Wallace of Sisterhood Books. We expect additional bookstores will join us