Celebrating Our 40th Year In Business

Titcomb's Bookshop (aka The Paper Barn) circa 1973

When people say you should have a blog, they say you should just write about what is going on at the Bookshop. Let people know what’s going on, what it’s like to work here and what we are working on or excited about or whatever.

OK…you wanna know? Well, we are trying to figure out the best way to celebrate our 40^th anniversary. Our parents, Ralph and Nancy Titcomb, started Titcomb’s Bookshop in 1969 after moving to East Sandwich with their 8 kids, aged 14 to 9 months.  Our Dad was an engineer and was starting a new job.   Isn’t opening a bookstore in your spare time what you would do right after moving into a really, really old house, in a new state with your 8 kids?  When they started the store it was initially called The Paper Barn and carried only used and rare books and ephemera. It has grown to its current 3 story structure selling new and used books as well as toys, games and many, many cards.

This is a great occasion and one very much worth celebrating. But how?  How do you thank people for getting us to this point?  Thank people for sticking with us through:

–the leaky roof of the original building (some customers may remember helping us stretch plastic over the magazine racks on a particularly bad day)

–waking our 90 year old Grammy who was occcasionally manning the cash register in the early years

–the porta-potty years at the new building

–the live snake that our bookshop cat Patches brought into the store (twice)

–the animal menagerie that was Titcomb’s Bookshop circa 1975 (2 horses, 2 grumpy geese, 3 cats, a dog, 10 or so ducks, about 5 chickens and one friendly black crow named “Al”) It was not uncommon to have a “Free Kittens” sign outside the shop in those years!

On the plus side, visitors have gotten to meet some great people here like Edward Gorey, Bob Ballard, Susan Branch, Nathaniel Philbrick, Henry Winkler, Geraldine Brooks, Jodi Picoult, Alice Hoffman, Philip Craig and way too many more to mention.

So we’d really like to celebrate!  Our first thought was to invite some authors and we certainly have done that! There are  some really exciting authors coming this summer and fall, including Richard Russo, Wally Lamb and Jeannette Walls.   We’re going to hold a party (but that seems rather easy!).  We are going to have a make your own sundae buffet with 40 different toppings!  (Food is always a priority for us!) We are also having a special commemorative wood cut engraving print made of the shop that will be available for sale for a nominal fee.

Is that good enough? Can we do more? Any ideas?  Please send them to us!