The Bookshop Podcast
The Bookshop Podcast
The Literary Heartbeat of Santa Barbara: Jen Lemberger at Chaucer's Books
In this episode, I chat with Jen Lemberger, co-owner of Chaucer's Books.
Nestled in Santa Barbara's Loreto Plaza sits a literary institution fifty-one years in the making. Chaucer's Books, now under the stewardship of Jen Lemberger and Greg Feitt, stands as a testament to the enduring power of independent bookstores in our communities.
Jen's career started in health research and social epidemiology. She worked with organizations like Direct Relief before pursuing a master's in library science and eventually returning to Chaucer's, where she had once worked part-time alongside Greg. "I like to provide it as evidence for folks that you're not going to have one career," she reflects, offering hope to anyone questioning their professional journey.
The transition came as Mahri Kerley, who had owned Chaucer's since its founding in 1974, turned 80 the same year the bookstore celebrated its 50th anniversary. What makes Chaucer's special isn't just its impressive collection of over 100,000 titles, but the care taken in curating them. As a New York Times reporting bookstore with strong publisher relationships, they strike a balance between bestsellers and niche interests, ensuring depth across all sections. Their booksellers are strategically hired for their diverse reading specialties, creating a knowledge ecosystem where customers can always find someone who speaks their literary language.
Despite challenging retail trends, Chaucer's thrives as both a destination for bibliophiles and a beneficiary of its location near frequently visited establishments. Millennials, Jen notes, have become their fastest-growing demographic.
Whether you're a Santa Barbara local or just passing through, Chaucer's Books offers that irreplaceable feeling of discovery that only comes from wandering through shelves curated by passionate readers who know their community. As Jen's ever-growing "to be read" pile attests, the literary journey never ends—and Chaucer's Books ensures you'll never run out of new worlds to explore.
The Martha’s Vineyard Beach and Book Club, Martha Hall Kelly
I Know the Whale (A Social Emotional Picture Book for Kids), Robin Yardi
Our Beautiful Boys, Sameer Pandya
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson-Beverly and I'm a bibliophile. Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast. Each week, I present interviews with authors, independent bookshop owners and booksellers from around the globe and publishing professionals. To help the show reach more people, please share episodes with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. You're listening to episode 292.
Speaker 1:Chaucer's Books is a local woman and veteran-owned independent bookstore in the Loretto Plaza on Upper State Street in Santa Barbara, california. Packed with over 150,000 titles, chaucer's has been a mainstay for book lovers since 1974. Alongside their excellent customer service, they are committed to providing the Santa Barbara community with an impressive depth and breadth of books in any and all genres and subjects. Chaucer's Books also carries a wide selection of cards, puzzles, games, magazines and gifts curated to any age. On a personal note, chaucer's Books is where I purchase books for the Lunch with an Author literary series in Santa Barbara. Greg Fate and Jen Lemberger took over as co-owners in 2024, and doing business with them is always a pleasure. The booksellers at Chaucer's help me find books and order what I need if it's not in stock, and also carry them to my car, which is a plus for me.
Speaker 1:Chaucer's Books is a fabulous indie bookshop serving the Santa Barbara reading community and supporting local authors and the wider global writing community. I'm lucky today to have as my guest co-owner Jen Lamger. Hi, jen, and welcome to the show. Good morning, how are you today Doing? All right, that's good. Well, let's begin with learning about you and your work in health, research and analytics and the Santa Barbara Library before becoming the co-owner of Chaucer's Books with Greg Fade in 2024. The experience of working in research and analytics and at the Santa Barbara Library must have been helpful when you started working at the bookshop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know a wending way to where I am now and it's a. I like to provide it as evidence for folks that you know you're not going to have one career. You know and you can do different things and and be in different fields. So when I graduated from UCSB, I came to Santa Barbara for school and was very into you know, medical, world, health science, and was deciding things sort of what I was going to do next. Next and ended up being really interested in social epidemiology so how diseases spread based on social interactions, on our built environment and so that interaction of you know, a virus and the world in which we live. And so got my master in public health.
Speaker 2:So worked in the public health field for over a decade, worked in town with organizations like Direct Relief, which is where I was on the research and analytics team.
Speaker 2:So I was working with looking at where our partners were, the conditions in which they were existing, what we were providing to them, how much we were providing cost value type and, as well, working with the national federally qualified health centers Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics are an example of an FQHC and just doing a bunch of research projects related to health and evaluation and ended up moving from there.
Speaker 2:A colleague who was at Direct Relief had gone and worked at the Kellogg Foundation and recruited me to come work with him on implementing a new project so still health and social related and it was working on sort of an IT project putting in an entirely new data collection and evaluation environment for the foundation and had been thinking of, you know, sort of what my next steps would be and what I wanted to do. And one of the projects that the Kellogg Foundation supports is, in their truth, racial healing and transformation work. They have a grant to the American Library Association and so I was looking at the work that they were doing and I had always been a book reader. You know I had previously worked at. The one of my first part time jobs out of college was working at the Montecito Union Elementary School and then also at Chaucer's.
Speaker 2:Those were, you know, sort of the before I went to grad school and decided I needed another degree. I was looking at libraries. I wouldn't have gotten another degree if it wasn't required, which is a lot, I would say. A lot of people don't realize that the vast majority of public librarians, school librarians that they encounter, are not only college educated but have a master's degree. It's pretty much required for the vast majority of positions. And so I was looking at, you know, a lot of libraries were doing health outreach, doing social work, doing more community engaged programming, and so all the jobs that I was interested in it was, you know, must have to even apply. And so I was like, well, okay, I guess this is what I'm doing next.
Speaker 2:And so I got my master in library science and then, you know, just happenstance, timing being great, ended up getting a job back here in Santa Barbara at the public library and worked as an adult programming librarian for a number of years, and then I actually the job that I had previous to getting to be a co-owner is I was working for the state library, the California State Library, the state library, the California State Library and so I was working on programs, grant programs that supported libraries across the state. I was in charge of the ARPA, the COVID funding that went out to the state so got to do, in partnership with colleagues at the state level, a number of statewide programs. So helped instigate, with the urging of the state level, a number of statewide programs. So it helped instigate, with the urging of the state librarian Greg Lucas, and then, as well, working with co-worker Chris, the totally free e-book collection that the state now has for all residents was one of the things that I got to work on, so it's really great to see that still going.
Speaker 1:Gosh, what a fabulous education you have, and life experience too. You mentioned that you were working part-time for Chaucer's, what led you to get back to Chaucer's full-time.
Speaker 2:Well, greg's worked there, so my partner, he's worked there ever since we met. So you know our meet cute is we were both working part-time at Chaucer's and that was 2005, 2006. And so we stayed together ever since, but he continued to work at Chaucer's while I went off to public health school, came back, went to Michigan, came back. So it's always been one of those things of you know you have those conversations of wouldn't it be cool if and so the opportunity, one of those opportunities that happened because of, or, you know, instigated in a way by COVID that it wouldn't have been otherwise, where previous owner had had, you know, mentioned in other moments of like, oh, retiring or moving on, um, but when covid happened, that was such a wildly different, um, you know, venue, uh, for trying to work within, you know, and she, she could have retired even before that it's the love of the bookstore, but finally was in the like I don't need to do this anymore, this can be somebody else's problem and that was.
Speaker 1:Mari Curley. How long did she have the store for?
Speaker 2:She was the only owner up until we bought it. And so she turned 80. The same year the bookstore turned 50. So she was the only owner up until that point, oh my goodness. And so we approached her with saying hey, we're interested in buying. Um, it ended a bit of a process, but we are happy to be where we are now. So it was, I think, a long time thought, a long time dream that right timing. We were able to make it happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've seen this happening over the last few years where one owner has owned a bookshop for maybe 20 to 50 years and then they've wanted to retire and they've kind of passed the baton. And it's quite often someone who has been involved with the store as a bookseller. As you mentioned, mari was 80 when the bookshop turned 50. That's a great finale to what a wonderful career she's built for herself and a place for the reading community of Santa Barbara. What are some changes you and Greg want to bring into Chaucer's books and what's your vision for the future of the store?
Speaker 2:There's not a lot that I would say has sort of changed. The bread and butter of the store is selling the books. It is known for the breadth of books as well as the depth within each section and that is something that we are very cognizant of and are looking to make sure that we carry that forward and have that available. Some of the changes we're in the fun process of looking at new flooring and have that available. Some of the changes you know like we're in the fun process of looking at new flooring and what that takes and updates to things, new phone lines. You know really exciting projects that are. You know. I mean clearly people will recognize when it gets to the point of new flooring. But there's a lot of things that we will update that customers will probably have no idea that is happening, but hoping to make it more streamlined, more efficient, more helpful for our staff.
Speaker 1:So it's a lot of behind the scenes changes that are significant, especially costly, I should imagine Floor covering isn't cheap, right? I mentioned earlier in your introduction that Chaucer's Books is where I purchased the books for the Lunch with an Author literary series in Santa Barbara. One of the reasons is because it is a real draw when I can say to PR people at publishing companies and to authors and managers and marketing people that I purchased the books through Chaucer's Books, which is a New York Times reporting bookshop. Can you explain to our listeners why this is important and how you become a New York Times reporting bookshop?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's actually a fairly simple process that just has a waiting list. There's truly like a form on the New York Times website you know to go into. We, as most independent bookstores are, are members of the American Booksellers Association, who are phenomenal in supporting and helping independent bookstores, and so they are, I would say, the resource that folks go to for that process. They have a you know sort of good one pager for folks and so it is, you know, some simple things of New York Times wants the bookstore to have been in business for a certain length of time and that's just essentially for consistency. They want to make sure that there are staff who can actually run this report weekly. Consistency they want to make sure that there are staff who can actually run this report weekly, which is a fairly simple process, but it has to consistently be done. So we have a staff person who just does that every Monday morning and gets that in, and it's truly nothing fancy, it's just, you know. Part of it is also, hopefully, you have a point of sale system that makes it easy to just, you know, run a report, get the dump from the last week of what was sold and then, truly, you know, we report our sales in a lovely old Excel CSV format, give it, give it over to the New York Times, and then I can only imagine the sort of number crunching and matching that happens on the back end at the New York Times for the several easily over a thousand folks that turn this in. And so it's, in terms of process, an easy thing for us to do. It is great, like you said, for sort of having that, that it's like on a checklist of things for authors. If you're in New York Times reporting, folks of a certain echelon definitely want to have their sales reported, and so it's great. But I would say, one of the things, two parts. I mentioned the American Booksellers Association, the ABA. They also have the indie bestsellers weekly. So that's another thing that's actually really important for us because we also get benefits through that. We get benefits through the New York Times bestseller list.
Speaker 2:But perhaps the most important thing in bringing in authors, having relationships, receiving advanced reader copies, getting all of that is actually our relationships with our publisher reps. Those are phenomenally important. They are the folks who were there in a wonderful way, the middleman between us, the publisher, and they're recommending books and they're highlighting, making sure that we're not missing things, and so the better relationships we have with our publisher reps. They're the folks who are going to connect us with publicists, with editors, with other people, and so we love our reps. And you know, it's a great benefit Greg and I got to buy a store that's 50 years old. Great benefit, greg and I got to buy a store that's 50 years old and a lot of you know, in the book world there are a lot of people who stay for a long time. They love their work, love what they're doing, and so there are a number of reps that we've had at the store for over a decade and so we've got some really strong relationships there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know that brings up something. I remember speaking with a few independent bookshop owners who aren't in big cities, who aren't even in bigger towns. They're in the smaller communities and with budget cuts, they're actually not getting as many visits from their reps, if any at all, and they're finding that really sad because they've spent years building up these relationships. As you said, you've got some reps there that have been coming back and forth for 10 years and suddenly not having that must be really difficult. Let's talk about small presses, who aren't often, you know, repped by a big distributor. I'm a fan of small and medium presses, especially in the UK, Ireland, even in Santa Barbara you have Gunpowder Press. Do you carry many books from small and medium presses globally?
Speaker 2:So I would say we don't necessarily work directly in that same way. We definitely are getting their catalogs and buying. There are some small presses here in Santa Barbara that we absolutely have relationships with. There are a number of reps who also carry the other smaller you know, not the big five and so we are absolutely looking through those catalogs and buying those and I actually buy for the children's room, the kids' room side, children's room, the kids' room side, and so there are some amazing artists and authors, illustrators, coming through the smaller presses, books in translation as well, that we aren't getting from the big five necessarily, and so those are absolutely, you know, and as I said before, it's the breadth and depth of those medium and small publishers are important for those factors and those gems that you might not find in other places.
Speaker 1:I want to be greeted by booksellers. If they know my name, that's even better. I rarely look through the New York Times bestseller list, even though we've just been talking about that. I don't need to see books front-facing. I love a bookshop that has notes saying what the booksellers in the store are recommending and reading are better. I even love it when the booksellers come up and talk to me. I love reading books that have been translated, but some of my favorite books have been because I've had conversations with booksellers. They've asked me a whole lot of questions about what books I read. What do I like? What am I in the mood for? So let's talk about your booksellers. Do you have specific booksellers who love a certain genre or nonfiction, fiction, classics and, as you said earlier, you did the book buying for the children's section? I would love to know more about your booksellers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in interviews for hiring new folk we ask what they read and what their favorite genres, areas are. That is extremely important to us. It is a factor we take into account. If we you know someone retires, someone moves and we're you know hiring on, we're looking at what is that specialty that we might be missing? Are we missing someone who knows history? Are we missing someone who knows manga and graphic novels? So we definitely hire with that in mind.
Speaker 2:If we had everybody just reading literary fiction, we would be missing out in terms of that service factor at the store. So everybody shelves different areas of the store that they're responsible for and for the most part everyone has at least one section that is a desired you know. That is, you know theirs for their personal reasons, not just because it was assigned to them. And so we have. You know, if you want poetry, we've got folks who can recommend poetry. The history aisle, the music aisle, the films, graphic novels, all of that niche that we go to. It is quite often that someone will come in with a question of like I just read this and I'd really like to read another. You know a romanticist, or I'd like to read another historical fiction, depending upon who's on staff that day. Someone you know might try to answer that, even if it's not their specialty or they'll be like, oh, let me go get this person, they'll be the perfect person to answer that for you.
Speaker 1:And do your booksellers help with the curation of their dedicated little book area.
Speaker 2:No, that is, we have buyers. We want our staff to have a good feeling of responsibility and contribution and so if there's something that they saw, you know, an article or things that have come up and making recommendations for, oh my gosh, this is absolutely something we did on a shelf and we need to buy this or recognizing, oh, I think we sold out of this and we haven't reordered it Like this is absolutely something that needs to be on the shelf. Those are things that happen all the time and we encourage and we want folks to be doing, but we have currently three buyers and so they're the folks that are doing the front list, buying, but then doing the daily backlist as well of what's sold, what needs to be put back on the shelf. But when you've got over 100,000 titles in one place, everybody's eyeballs on things is extremely important so that things don't get missed and fall through the cracks again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think for a bookseller, it's definitely easier to sell books that you've read, you love and possibly reread, or perhaps you've read an author's entire collection. I think it's easier to sell what you love and know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that plays into for the booksellers. It is the difference, or one of the differences for our buyers and our booksellers is you know the people on the floor get to do that. They're the folks who are hand selling their favorites, the most recent. And what is interesting for the buyers is we're having to sort of tamp down our personal you know predilections and pay attention to what is our community asking for, what is selling to our community. You know how many of these.
Speaker 2:You know teen romance novels am I buying, even though I'm like, okay, that's fine, um, or I adore this children's picture book, but I'm not going to buy 20 copies of it, and so it is on the buyer and having that wherewithal of you know what is in the New York Times, what is on the indie bestseller list, what was in our recent weekly paper, what is being talked about, what was on the news shows, what was on NPR, because we do need to have those things that people hear about and come into the store for. But then also knowing our community and being like, oh, this nature book or this hiking book, this biography, these are things that you know maybe other stores aren't buying in this quantity, but for us, for our folks, our readers. Those are things that we definitely need to have on the shelf.
Speaker 1:You've brought up something interesting. I'm a huge backlist reader. If I find an author I love, I want to read their whole collection and obviously smaller bookshops. There's no way they can keep the whole backlist of every author on those shelves, but I do enjoy seeing certain backlists of authors on bookshelves next to their latest book. Are you a backlist reader?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, I am someone who so. Nk Jemisin is one of my absolute favorite authors and I wasn't introduced to her. I didn't find her until her Broken Earth trilogy and she'd written many books before that and that was absolutely an author where I read that trilogy and then immediately went back and read her other series and then have then kept following her and she's released new books. But I absolutely do that. I think that is one of the best things about bookstores and about reading is you know we are, and about reading is you know we are lucky to have new release authors and it's their first book and that's amazing.
Speaker 2:But then also having you know I had never read a Colm Toybain book until and it's been one of those like, oh, I should read Toybain, and you know it's. You know there's so many of those authors that you have. And he was in town and he came into the store and we knew he was coming in and so we had. We had like 80 books of his you know vast backlist as well, as you know Long Island, his most recent one for him to sign and he was so delightful and just a wonderful just chatting away while he was signing his books that it then moved the like. Okay, I'm now going to read a Toy Bean book that's been sitting on my TBR for a while, and then he's got this fast backlist now that I can go in and read.
Speaker 1:Yeah, once you get started on backlist reading, it's kind of addictive. Let's talk about beautiful Santa Barbara, because it is a tourist destination. I'm guessing, like most indie bookshops, you rely on your loyal customer base. Do you feel your customer base is continually growing and, if so, what age group of readers has shown the most growth?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we are here because of our community readers. There's no way that we could be the size we are and the success we are if we were more focused or needed to rely on tourism for our bottom line. We are in Santa Barbara. It is, you know, comparatively definitely. You know the education level, the literacy level, and we benefit from that absolutely. So we're very thankful.
Speaker 2:We've had great relationships with our schools for a long time and so being able to host school book fairs at the store is no small thing. Of course we you know both sides of it we love that we get to provide money because it's during the book fairs. 25% of all sales goes back to the school. It's a fundraiser for them. So being able to support our schools is amazing, but it's truly one of the best ways for new folks to also get introduced to the store.
Speaker 2:So if you've moved to town, if you have, you know, just recently had kids in our elementary school. Even if you've been around, maybe you haven't been reading as much, and so having families come in for book fairs is like a boon. You know on both sides for that, and I think, the millennials I am a Xenial, I'm on the young end of Gen X, old end of millennials, the Oregon Trail window and millennials get a lot of flack these days, but I would say it is, you can see it in the numbers and it is at libraries, at bookstores. They are the folks who are reading the most now, Whether that is again, like I said, if they are, you know, new parents, they're coming back with their kids, they're coming in, or millennials are also at that stage where they are old enough to have their kids go to college at this point and they have time to read and are coming back, and that is definitely one of the things we are seeing.
Speaker 1:One of the interesting things about Chaucer's is that it is a drive to location. It's actually a destination because people want to come to Chaucer's books and this isn't unusual for bookshops, because if you look at any main street in any main city or larger town or you can call them a high street in the UK and Ireland a lot of the businesses have moved or they've closed. I mean, you'd go down Main Street Santa Barbara now and it is not the bustling street that it was 10, 5, gosh even 3 years ago. But one of the things I think we're seeing is it's because of the high rents and because people love their indie bookshops, they're prepared to travel to go and buy a book. Last year, in 2024, we had Gillian Flynn come out for the Lunch with an Author series for Santa Barbara and I noticed she went with her husband to Chaucer's Books and she posted a picture of herself holding some books right near the little chalkboard outside the store. I mean, you couldn't ask for better marketing than that, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. So two things on that I myself, my husband and I, and then also my friend Angelica and I, are examples of when we go on trips. We search out the bookstores, the libraries, the places, and so they are to us destinations and I think, as we said earlier, like those are the tourists that we see, are the, are the, the book lovers, the book readers, um, who are coming in, um, but we absolutely benefit in terms of our community, um, we're in laredo plaza. It has been family owned for generations, um, they take care of us. They take care of you know the tenants that are there and so you know we.
Speaker 2:Greg, the other co-owner, has the story that many other kids have.
Speaker 2:Josh Brolin said he even had the same thing when he was chatting with us of you know we're right next to one of the grocery stores, we're next with us.
Speaker 2:Of you know we're. We're right next to the one of the grocery stores, we're next to Harry's. You know we're by these other places that people are going for things the coffee shop, so having the, the oh, parent caregiver, someone is going into Gelson's to go shopping and the kid gets dropped off at Chaucer's and the kid is hanging out, you know, for 20 minutes just looking at books reading, and so that was one of the things that we've heard for generations of folks, and so we are lucky to have the reputation and be sought out by folks who are visiting in town. But we also have the benefit of being in a location where people are going all the time for various things. Are they paying their Cox bill, are they going to the golf store, are they going for their morning workout at Core Sport, are they heading to Renault, are they going to VMA, astra, and we're just like right there, and so the foot traffic of just you know. Oh, reservation at Harry's isn't for another 20 minutes, we're just going to hop into the store.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the location works for you. Santa Barbara is home to a few literary icons, but also to budding writers and poets, who are some of your favorite local authors.
Speaker 2:Who are some of your favorite local authors I right now am obsessed with. I think I have it actually here, Robin Yardy is a local children's author and her recent her, I Know the Whale illustrator, matt Hsu, is so Santa Barbara, so it's a beautiful story anyway of understanding death and the beauty of natural things in their states, even after they are alive, but it is inspired by the blue whale skeleton that's at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural.
Speaker 2:History, chad, and so she has a little addendum at the end where she talks about the skeleton and the inspiration of it and it is beautifully illustrated and wonderfully told and has, like that very specific Santa Barbara connection. That I'm just. You know we got to have a story time with her but I am recommending it to everybody because it's so beautiful with her. But I am recommending it to everybody because it's so beautiful um, so that's my most recent one, but you know we have the so many folks um, you know we were blessed to be able to have um sojourner kincaid roll um as one of our our poets and our poet laureates in town.
Speaker 2:Um Grafton's Indelible Mark, you know, for Santa Barbara, tc Boyle Samir Pandya just came out with his most recent Our Beautiful Boys Josh Brolin's memoir. We surprise people if they picked it up. We get to count him as a local author. Now I also, as I said, I am a zennial and so if anyone was reading sort of the scary horror books, rl Stine's had his comeback. But Christopher Pike, sandra Barbara read all the Christopher Pike scary books.
Speaker 1:Jen, I know you're constantly having events at the bookshop. Do you also hold writing classes?
Speaker 2:So we don't have classes in a way that maybe, hopefully, we will.
Speaker 2:We don't have the space for it, and we were very lucky when we did our 50th anniversary events. We knew we wanted to do something big and special and also knew we didn't have the space to be holding workshops. So we partnered with um, two doors down from us, um, as another women-owned business, core sport, and they let us use their space when they weren't having class, um, and so we were able to have a zine workshop and so we had local folks, um, all leading those and so so you know, there's the possibility and I'd say we love doing things in partnership One. There's always a million things happening in Santa Barbara, and after everybody tried to do their own thing, we're all just competing with each other in a not helpful way, and so working with others, supporting other events, getting to be in other places, partner on things, I think is something we absolutely strive for, are looking to continue to do, because even if we don't have the space, someone else might, might, and we get to be part of that and work with another community or business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's nothing quite like building community through community. Let's talk books, Jen. What are you currently reading?
Speaker 2:I have about 60 pages left. Nnedi Okorafor's latest Death of the author, um. I am absolutely a sci-fi fantasy reader, um, and she is one of my favorites. So her most recent release, um, came out at the beginning of the month. I want to say so I'm almost done with that one. Um. Next on my list. You know one of the lovely benefits of being a bookseller is our advanced reader copies. So I actually have Isabel Allende's. My Name is Emilia Del Valle. That's like on the top of my to be read list and then also personally, I'm also reading and taking it slow because it's one of the books that's sort of. It's kind of a workbook, not quite a workbook, but you have to, you know, kind of sit with. It is Adrienne Murray Brown's Emergent Strategy. So, as many readers, my to be read pile is falling over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was interesting the difference between my pile before so let's say May a year ago, may of last year, when I was working at the state library I was, like you know, really proud and I had gotten it down as like a manageable level. There wasn't like a pile on the floor, there was just the like two shelves and the bookshelf of need to read, two shelves in the bookshelf of Need to Read and that's all out the window again. I've got like two giant piles on the floor. You know advanced reader copies of books, you know that I'm just dying to read.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the to be read piles just keep growing. It is crazy the list of books we need to read. Jen, thank you so much for being on the show. I wish you and Greg all the best with Chaucer's books and it's exciting. I look forward to seeing what you both do with the shop. And thank you also to Greg for making sure my orders get in on time. I know sometimes it's a bit of a rush, but I'm truly grateful. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing you next week when I pop in to pick up boxes of Martha Hawkelly's new book, the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club. Martha is our guest at the Lunch with an Author series at the Santa Barbara Club in Santa Barbara on Thursday June 12th and you can get your tickets at wwwmandyjacksonbevelycom forward slash events. And also she's going to be coming by Chaucer's Books to Sign Books later that afternoon. Thanks again, Jen, you take care, yeah thank you Again.
Speaker 2:We couldn't be here without the folks in our community and, as I said, you know we love partnering and being parts of events, and so yours is just an example of a way of working together and getting to reach folks and supporting our of events, and so yours is just an example of a way of working together and getting to reach folks and supporting our reading community.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to my conversation with Jen Lemberger, co-owner of Chaucer's Books in Santa Barbara, with Greg Fate. To help the show reach more people, please share episodes with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. To find out more about the Bookshop Podcast, go to thebookshoppodcastcom and make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to the show. You can also follow me at Mandy Jackson Beverly on X, instagram and Facebook and on YouTube at the Bookshop Podcast. If you have a favorite indie bookshop that you'd like to suggest we have on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you via the contact form at thebookshoppodcastcom. The Bookshop Podcast is written and produced by me, mandy Jackson Beverly, theme music provided by Brian Beverly, executive assistant to Mandy, adrian Otterhan and graphic design by Frances Farala. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time. Bye.