Skip to main content
Last spring, on the Wednesday before Michaela “Mick” Granger opened her little horror-themed book and movie store on Northeast Alberta Street, Midslumber Media (1609 NE Alberta St., 971-347-3148, midslumbermedia.com), she did the indie-bookstore version of a media blitz. Which is to say, she put up a single TikTok post.
“I just said, ‘I’m going to be opening this store,’” Granger remembers. “It took off really fast, way faster than I anticipated. I thought maybe a hundred people would see it. It was thousands.” When she opened on March 22, there was a line on the sidewalk waiting to be frightened.
Midslumber isn’t alone. Independent bookstores are riding a national wave of interest. After a decades-long die-off, bookstores have seen 70% growth nationwide since 2021, according to the American Booksellers Association—a renaissance helped along by depressed commercial rents and a screen-weary public.
But nowhere in the city is thicker with bookstores than Northeast Alberta Street, which has evolved into what fine art bookstore Monograph Bookwerks co-owner John Brodie believes is among the densest tracts of book shops in the United States—a humble spiritual successor to Manhattan’s legendary but now defunct book row on Fourth Avenue.
Alberta now boasts six dedicated independent bookstores within a dozen blocks, each honed to a unique niche and audience, whether fine art or fine food. It’s as if a single bookstore decided to stretch out its sections along a busy arts district. That’s not even counting craft stores like Collage and Close Knit, which each keep a shelf of tomes and magazines devoted to coloring or yarncraft.
“I don’t know if there are other streets that have that concentration. Portland is unique,” Brodie says, noting that 80 shops took part in Portland Book Week this year. “It’s insane that there’s that many bookstores in Portland.”
This spring, Brodie gathered his neighboring booksellers together to create an Alberta Street Book Row bookmark, illustrated by local artist Patrick Long, which now sits on the counter at each store—an effort to stamp it as a literary destination, and to send customers to each others’ stores.
There’s Brodie’s Monograph Bookwerks (5005 NE 27th Ave., 503-284-5005, monographboookwerks.com), which, at 16, is one of the oldest bookstores on the strip. The store has expanded its fine art book focus to include dissident art and concert posters going back decades in Portland—a nod to Brodie’s former life as a concert promoter and Pink Martini manager.
And there’s Vivienne Culinary Books (2724 NE Alberta St., 503-575-2866, vivienneculinarybooks.com), one of a scant but growing number of dedicated culinary bookstores nationwide. Vivienne offers a tightly curated selection of culinary wares and specialty cookbooks: Abra Berens’ odes to fruits or roughage, fermentation how-tos, and precious antiquaria like a 1931 Larousse Gastronomique encyclopedia of cooking.
There, chef-turned-bookseller Robin Wheelright might host a pasta potluck devoted to the anti-fascist women of Italy or a coq au vin workshop based on a Julia Child cookbook. She moved her formerly Hollywood District store to Alberta in 2024, and happily found a street already full of books.
Parallel Worlds Bookshop (2639 NE Alberta St., 503-789-0381, parallelworldsbookshop.com) is a tightly packed bookstore whose high shelves are devoted to science fiction and fantasy, alongside a bit of horror. There, you might find a customer updating co-owner Sam Jones on his progress through Robin Hobbs’ Farseer epic fantasy series. It’s impossible to put down, the customer told Jones, and yet so bleak it’s hard to keep reading.
“Oh yeah,” Jones replies. “Wait till the third book!”
The store opened just four years ago but boasts a fervent fan base—with three separate, 50-member book clubs devoted to sci-fi and fantasy, romantasy and horror. Though Midslumber and Parallel Worlds overlap in genres a little, the mood is far from competitive. Indeed, Midslumber’s Granger credits Jones with helping her learn the retail ropes.
Jones, in turn, credits Mitchell Melville, of nearby used bookstore Melville Books (2827 NE Alberta St., melvillebooks.store) as his retail mentor. Melville’s shop, cheekily denoted by a sign on its wall as “Portland’s Smallest Bookstore,” is a tucked-away cubby of history, philosophy and literature from what’s often euphemistically called the “other tradition.” One shelf might range from the indefinable Argentine fictions of Julio Cortázar to minimalist Lydia Davis and multiple works apiece by Don DeLillo and Portland author Patrick deWitt.
Jones had initially worked at Melville’s shop. And then Melville became his partner, helping him open Parallel Worlds. This spirit of collaboration extends to more casual helping hands, too. Booksellers often scout books for other stores, and tip each other off to collections that might be of interest, notes Monograph owner Brodie. Sharing a bookmark under the name Alberta Street Book Row is just a physical representation of a close relationship that already existed.
But before there was ever a Book Row, there was Green Bean Books (1600 NE Alberta St., 503-954-2354, greenbeansbookspdx.com). Former schoolteacher Jennifer Green founded the homey, quirky, impossibly crowded children’s bookstore in 2009. Over the course of 17 years, Green and partner Maggie Yuan have hosted story hours and readings by children’s authors, installed finger-puppet vending machines with characters based on people they know, and brought books to schools to read to the children there.
They’ve also watched multiple generations of little book readers grow up into bigger book readers. “We have a family who were neighbors to the store: One of the boys has graduated college, and he stops by to say hi,” Green says. “He used to sell lemonade in front of the store.”
Now, when the children become teens and finally outgrow Captain Underpants, they don’t have to go far to find their next read.
“I can just send them across the street to the horror store,” Green says, laughing. “We don’t carry a lot of horror books in here.”
