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Welcome to Apostle Islands Booksellers

Apostle Islands BooksellersApostle Islands Booksellers is a full-service, locally-owned, independent bookstore located in Bayfield, Wisconsin on the south shore of Lake Superior. Our collection of books emphasizes the history, cultures, nature, lifestyle, cuisine and activities of our locale – the Apostle Islands, the Chequamegon region, Lake Superior, the Great Lakes, Ojibwe Country and the Northwoods.
 
We offer carefully selected general fiction and non-fiction titles of interest to residents of Bayfield, Washburn, Ashland and the surrounding communities as well as the many visitors who journey to the unique and spectacular settings of Madeline Island, the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore and the Gaylord A. Nelson National Wilderness Area. We also carry a selection of quality accessories, maps and charts, and gift items with a regional flavor.
 
You will find us on Rittenhouse Avenue in the heart of historic Bayfield, Wisconsin across from the Big Water Café and Coffee Roasters. Come in and browse. If we don’t have just what you want, we can usually get it for you quickly or find an excellent alternative. Check our Events calendar and join us for author readings, book groups and other events to add a literary dimension to your Bayfield experience.
 

 

"This Superior Place" Book Release Event

Sunday, May 26, 2013 - 3:00pm - 5:00pm

this superior place cover image When: Sunday, May 26th at 3pm
Where: Bayfield, Maritime Museum, 131 South 1st Street, Bayfield

Join us at the Bayfield Maritime museum to celebrate the release of Dennis McCann's latest book, This Superior Place.

Picturesque little Bayfield on Lake Superior is Wisconsin's smallest city by population but one of its most popular visitor destinations. This book captures those unique qualities that keep tourists coming back year after year and offers a historically reliable look at the community as it is today and how it came to be. Abundantly illustrated with both historical and contemporary images, This Superior Place showcases, as author Dennis McCann writes, "a community where the past was layered with good times and down times, where natural beauty was the one resource that could not be exhausted by the hand of man, and where history is ever present."

Because Bayfield serves as "the gateway to the Apostle Islands," the book also includes chapters on the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, Madeline Island, and the nearby Red Cliff Ojibwe community. It also covers the significant eras in the city's history: lumbering, quarrying, commercial fishing, and the advent of the orchards visitors see today. It is not a guidebook as such but more of a visual and written tour of the city and the major elements that came together to make it what it is. Colorful stories from the past, written in Dennis McCann's casual, humorous style, give a sense of the unique characters and events that have shaped this charming city on the lake.

What Is the Group Reading?

 Winter scene with bookHi Everyone! It's Winter in Bayfield and we're reading! The AIB General Book Group got off to a great start for its third season.  We chose to meet again at Big Water Coffee Roasters across the street from the bookstore -- the second Wednesday of each month from 3:00 to 5:00 pm around the big table, all comers welcome.  We had enthusiastic participation and some great book choices.  The first book we read was The Lighthouse Road, Minnesota author Peter Geye's second novel.  It is the story of a young immigrant woman settling into life in Duluth in the 1890's still shocked at finding herself stranded in a new country alone and adrift.  Our group loved the book appreciating the authentic historical details, the exquisite language and the nuanced characters and relationships.  It's been a real pleasure to share this special book with our customers.

Our next Book Group choice, Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer, inspired a fascinating discussion about memory.  Everyone in the group liked the book and was glad we read it, less for any specific memory techniques than for the author’s examination of the history, science and sociology of memory and of memory’s evolving role in human interaction from the time before writing when memory was the only way to pass along information to the present where devices are being researched and developed to fully externalize memory, making internal memory theoretically completely unnecessary.   Yikes!  There are also some really simple techniques in the book which render some practical situations that call for memory a lot easier.  For example, all those bookstore customers who visit us frequently but often with long absences between visits.   I am always so glad to see them and mortified that I cannot remember their names!

One very important thing of which I was reminded from reading Moonwalking  is that, if we don’t take simple affirmative steps to place information likes names and faces into our long term memory, it will not simply happen automatically.  Period.  It’s a question of basic science, not declining mental capacity.  And, in this day when I depend on my “smart” phone for all those names, numbers and addresses that I used to know, unfortunately I guarantee that my phone is a lot smarter than I am!  So, I am designing my memory palace and images as I write!

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by Dr. Radut.