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Valentine's Day: Bookstores celebrate all over the world

Valentine's Day: Many bookstores have embraced the holiday in manners both touching and funny. Two bookstores celebrated Valentine's Day by offering to set up customers on a 'blind date' with a book.

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Benoit Tessier/Reuters
Roses are placed on the Pont des Arts over the River Seine in Paris.
  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

Booksellers around the world are celebrating Valentine’s Day in ways both heartfelt and tongue-in-cheek. 

Residents of Concord, N.H. can score a 10 percent discount on titles at Gibson’s Bookstore if they can make a case that love is somehow involved in the book they want to buy. And that doesn’t just mean romance.

“Have fun with this!” staff wrote on the Gibson’s Facebook page. “We want to be convinced! Does this book demonstrate the author's love of architecture? Tell us how. Does this book deal with broken hearts? Enlighten us.”

If a heart happens to adorn the cover, that also means a 10 percent discount for the patron.

Meanwhile, workers at Minnesota’s Lake Country Booksellers store in White Point Lake got creative with old holiday decorations, turning a small Christmas tree into a “Valentine book tree” using red lights and hearts (check out the picture here).

Meanwhile, some stores got creative with recommending titles to customers. Both McLean & Eakin Booksellers in Petoskey, Mich. and Northshire Bookstore in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. embraced the idea of a blind date with a book. Both stores wrapped books in paper so the cover couldn’t be seen and wrote descriptions of the titles on the paper, with phrases such as “boy detective” and “scandal” popping up on the books at McLean & Eakin Booksellers.

Finally, some took a more wry approach to the holiday, like the Kaleido Books & Gifts promotion in Perth, Australia.

“We've decided to go with a Valentine's Day promotion after all,” staff wrote on their Facebook page. On “Valentine’s Day only,” according to the sign, zombie and apocalyptic fiction is 20 percent off, following a theme of “Not if I was the last person on Earth?"

How is your local bookstore celebrating V-Day? Let us know!

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