Begun in 1978 by the inimitable Anita Raskin who passed away in 2002, the expanded Book Lady Bookstore continues to offer a broad range of gently used, rare, out-of-print and also new books. Joni Saxon-Giusti, who worked at The Book Lady with Mrs. Raskin for many years, purchased and revamped the business in 2002 and has overseen the exponential growth and relocation of the shop. We are proud to be still serving our community, and are very active with Savannah’s Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home, the Poetry Society of Georgia, the Southern Poetry Review, Georgia Historical Society, Wormsloe Foundation, Seersucker Live, and the annual Savannah Book Festival. So if you don’t see us in the shop, you’ll probably see us selling books somewhere around town!
WHAD’YA GOT?
Every day we hear our customers say, “This is an amazing store! It looks just like an old bookstore should!”, and we agree. Located in the heart of Savannah’s historic district at 6 E. Liberty Street, the cozy shop currently is loaded to the ceiling with 50,000 books, both fiction and nonfiction, hardbacks and paperbacks, in over 40 genres. Our rooms of books include (among many others) an extensive collection of Georgia and Southern history, art, architecture and photography, literary biography, classics, women’s studies, military history, foreign places and travel memoirs, small press, poetry, drama, philosophy, African-American, children’s, gardening, sports, religion, McSweeney’s issues, science and nature, and cookbooks. We also have a great and varied collection of first editions, signed, and rare titles.
All books are hand-picked by the shop’s proprietor, and reflect an appreciation of great literature and quirky, hard-to-find histories. We offer an out-of-print search service and advice (maybe too much!) from our knowledgeable staff, but our best service is in giving an unforgettable book lover’s experience where customers are invited to browse for that serendipitous find, and to stay and linger beside one of our two fireplaces, have a cup of coffee with the New York Times, and meet other book lovers. As for our philosophy, we ascribe to what the historian Barbara Tuchman said, “Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation a a standstill.”
