ALFA Opens Bookshop
Published in the Daily Astorian 6:58 pm Thursday, April 2, 2026
“You want more programs?” asked Patsy Oser, the vice president of the Astor Library Friends Association. “Buy some books.”
After hundreds of hours of planning and Dewey Decimal System organizing, ALFA officially opens its bookshop in the public library on Saturday. The store will only be open on Saturdays from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. until more volunteers are recruited.
Customers are encouraged to pay with cash but can pay with a card for a small fee. All proceeds will directly support library projects like the 10th Street Stage summer concert series, the Library of Things and supplying resources for young readers.
ALFA’s bookshop committee, aka the three musketeers, is comprised of Miki Frace, Gina Mattioda and Oser. Oser proposed the idea a few years ago. She was inspired by a downstairs bookstore in a Chicago library. Oser lived in Chicago prior to moving to Astoria.
“This is a happy place run by three happy people,” Oser said.
Astoria’s new library bookshop seemingly has every genre, including a substantial collection of picture books. M of the picture books are like new, and sell for as little as $1 each. The goal, according to Frace, is to keep prices low so more kids can buy books.
“Picture books are the biggie, because they’re ‘lap books,’” said Frace. “That’s where you learn to love reading because you’re sitting on somebody’s lap who loves you, who’s reading to you.”
“It’s the safest place on the planet,” Oser added. “You learn to associate books with comfort and security.”
In addition to children’s books, the bookshop will sell used hardbacks for $3 each or two for $5 — and paperbacks for $2 each.
“Top-shelf” items, what the shopkeepers call “treasures,” are priced a bit higher, up to $15 per book.
“My thrill is, from 1 to 5, you learn to read. From then on, you read to learn,” said Mattioda. During what she calls “these harsh times,” Mattioda said it is important for people to read and develop their beliefs on their own. “The bookshop is a slice of that.”
With several hundred books, the bookshop has no shortage of reading material, from Jane Austen, to coffee table books, to nautical diaries and even young adult options. Not to mention, books on local Astoria history.
On Tuesday night, ALFA members got a sneak peek and had the opportunity to purchase items in the bookshop and its unshelved inventory. Patricia Staton-Thomas, ALFA president, said the response was beyond anything she could have imagined and it reminded her that “things are well in the world.”
The store organizers said the looks on shoppers’ faces when they discovered new books to cherish made all their hours of preparation worth it. They shared that one gentleman took home two beautiful French cooking books for his coffee table and a collection of Audubon drawings. “He was like a little kid at Christmas,” Frace said.
For her grandniece, an emerging art teacher, Oser purchased a couple of books. One was “a beautiful book on butterflies,” and the other, on Dale Chihuly’s art. “A book has always been a gift,” Oser said.
Frace bought “World’s Most Dangerous,” a book by Michael Haglund about the history of Columbia River bar pilots, one of whom was a good friend before he passed. Mattioda said she has been enjoying William Kittredge’s “The Nature of Generosity,” which she is borrowing from the bookshop’s inventory.
While one of the perks of the bookshop is not having to worry about due dates, Frace said she will bring the book back for someone else to explore when she (and her husband, who she said can’t put it down) is done with it.
“Books are temporary friends in our lives,” Frace said. Beyond a localized community resource, the Astoria Public Library bookshop may become a hub for international book exchanges, with tourists visiting year-round. “What if you’re on a cruise and you finish your book?” Oser wondered.
Some of the shop’s inventory is old library books, but most of it comes from private donations. For locals interested in sharing their “old friends” with the community, or earning a tax deduction, the Bookshop Committee welcomes donations of books, DVDs and CDs that are in good shape. At this time, they are not accepting magazines, dictionaries or encyclopedias.