Vroman's Bookstore

Southern California's Oldest and Largest Independent Bookstore! Call us: 626.449.5320 Visit Us: 695 E. Colorado Blvd Pasadena, CA 91101

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Help us welcome our new neighbors! 

Established in 2000, New School of Cooking has been offering its unique, hands-on classes in California for 17 years and is widely considered to be the finest independent, state-approved culinary and baking school in Southern California. Small class size and an incredibly talented faculty are the foundation of that success. The school offers a variety of classes, ranging from one time recreational classes to twenty week series to professional diploma programs. Emerging talent in the world of restaurants, organic farming, bloggers, mixology, and artisan foods are part of our dynamic community. 

New School of Cooking is now opening its second site in Pasadena, CA on Sept. 12, 2017. This expanded site provides additional space not only for our educational programs, but comes equipt with a restaurant and retail store. 

Allium Restaurant and Bakery will be serving food and beverages from 7-5 Monday through Friday.  While the retail site, Cookstor, will carry the must have culinary items for students and the curious chef, along with local artisan goods and eclectic ware. Hours of operation for the Cookstor are Tuesday through Friday 8-5 and Saturday 9-3.  

Join us Tuesday Sept. 12 when Allium Restaurant and Bakery will be opening it’s doors for the first time 7 am-5 pm.  We’ll be serving you your morning wake-up call with coffee and our finest pastries that will carry you into our tasty lunch entrees until 5 pm.  In between meals don’t forget to check out our Cookstor to discover all the culinary goodies we are here to supply you with.  We have already started classes at our Pasadena campus, so please visit our site at www.newschoolofcooking.com to sign-up for your next class.  

New School of Cooking is thrilled to join the Pasadena community and we look forward to your visit!

For inquiries please contact [email protected]

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Sharpen your pointy sticks and get ready to slay! Celebrating 20 Years of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with this coloring book that has kick butt drawings & excerpts from the show on each page! On our shelves now!

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Book Store Love Stories continues with another love found while working at Vroman’s from Anne! Remember you can still continue to submit your stories!

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by Anne I met Sean at Vroman’s in 1985.  We were both employees, he in what was then called Commercial Stationery (now the pen department) and I in the Book Department.  A co-worker introduced us in the employee break room and we hit it off immediately; a few weeks later we started dating.  Turns out, three of our co-workers, including the one who introduced us, had conspired to get us together, and another one of them, the Book Department manager, arranged my schedule so that I could have the same days off as Sean.  Today Sean is the chair of the theatre department at the University of La Verne and I’m still at Vroman’s, now working as the Merchandising Manager.  We’ve been married since 1998.

If you’d like to see your love story featured on our blog and social media write us today! To submit your story send an e-mail to [email protected] with the subject line Book Store Love Stories. You are welcome to attach a photo that you don’t mind us using for marketing purposes.

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Book Store Love Stories continues with a brand new kind of love story from Cheryl! Remember you can still submit your stories!

by Cheryl Preparing to bring a new life into the world involves the purchase of many traditional necessities, such as diapers and bottles. These small preparations are part of the fun and excitement of pregnancy. However, the purchases that truly filled my heart with joy and hope, were the purchases made for the soul and imagination of the life that grew in my belly. During both of my pregnancies, I vividly recall scanning the shelves of Vroman’s for the first books to be selected for their libraries. Which words and magic would I fill them with? Which bits of knowledge should I offer first? These books were to be my first love letters to them. They would be my attempt to reveal the beauty of stories with the hope that they would come to digest them, take them in as part of themselves, as I do with every book that moves me. I can’t think of any better way that I could have introduced my little loves to the marvel and splendor of life. No better way to fill them with the love and hope, I held for them.

If you’d like to see your love story featured on our blog and social media write us today! To submit your story send an e-mail to [email protected] with the subject line Book Store Love Stories. You are welcome to attach a photo that you don’t mind us using for marketing purposes.

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Bookstore Love Stories continues with this adorable story from Bonnie! Remember you can continue to send us your stories!

Vroman’s Book Store is a lovely quaint place to find peace, adventure, and some mindful solitude. Whenever I am in the area I must stop by and peak inside to get a quick mini- mind vacation.

It is also a common destination that I frequent with my love, Mario. We have been together nearly 2 years now and often walk to and fro. When we are out and about at the movie theater, or at a local cafe, or after a trip to the local museums, we must stop at Vromans.  It is a romantic stop for a welcome pensive mood and mental collaboration. We get excited to discuss the many treasures.

Good communication and conversation are important to any relationship. Vroman’s gives us this opportunity to browse, think, and to finally come together again with new ideas and adventures. Books are an amazing way to enlighten any relationship. The two of us already often enjoy reading books, the newspaper, as well as a plethora of interesting articles. It makes sense that Vroman’s is also a place of romance and further adventure. It’s a compliment to Vroman’s to say that this local establishment has enlightened our lives together. We are happy together because we always challenge each other intellectually. We are happy at Vroman’s because it is a wonderful place of mindful and romantic stimulation! Thank you, Vroman’s! We continue to enjoy strolling in and out together. Hope to continue this lovely tradition for many more years to come!

If you’d like to see your love story featured on our blog and social media write us today! To submit your story send an e-mail to [email protected] with the subject line Book Store Love Stories. You are welcome to attach a photo that you don’t mind us using for marketing purposes.

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Bookstore Love Stories continues with this short but sweet tale from Tessa! Remember you can continue to send us your stories! 

by Tessa

After signing our first lease together in Pasadena, my boyfriend said he wanted to show me an amazing bookstore just down the street. Fifteen minutes after the lease was signed, we were looking through the staff recommendations. We drove straight to Vroman's and still love spending time browsing together, 8 months later.

If you’d like to see your love story featured on our blog and social media write us today! To submit your story send an e-mail to [email protected] with the subject line Book Store Love Stories. You are welcome to attach a photo that you don’t mind us using for marketing purposes.

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Bookstore Love Stories continues with this lovely story from past employee, Danny!Remember you can continue to send us your stories!

by Danny

My wife and I actually met for the first time at Vroman’s in 2000. We both were employees at the time. I worked in the receiving department and my wife worked as a book seller on the sales floor. It turns out that we both had crushes on each other but neither of us ever managed to work up the nerve to ask the other out. She was, and quite frankly still is, out of my league. I would stumble on my words and something ridiculous would come out of my mouth whenever our paths crossed. However, I was more than willing to wheel carts down to the sales floor every chance I could get in hopes that I would get a chance to make a fool of myself in front of her one more time. I found out years later that she had felt the same way about me.

Time passed and our lives took us on separate journeys. I didn’t realize it but it turns out we had the same close knit group of friends but had never been at the same place at the same time for over 10 years. In 2010, we had both volunteered to help restore the grounds at a place called the Gentle Barn in Santa Clarita. An organization that takes in abused/neglected animals and helps abused/neglected youth. I was scrolling through the people that were attending on their Facebook page and came across my old crush from Vroman’s Bookstore.

This time I didn’t let the opportunity to make a move pass me by. I sent her a message to make sure I wasn’t imagining the whole thing. At the time she had a picture of her and her niece as her profile and I had a picture of myself with my niece as mine. Right off the bat we each thought that the other was unavailable! We ended up making lunch plans for the following week. That was in January of 2010. We were engaged in January of 2013. We were fortunate enough to maintain a relationship with Vroman’s over the years and were able to take our engagement photos in the same location we saw each other for the first time in our lives. We were married on December 14th of 2013 and celebrated the birth of our daughter on July 13th of 2015. We read to our daughter everyday and are happy to say that books are by far her favorite “toy“.

Oh our names are Rona, Madelyn and Danny. Almost forgot that part!

If you’d like to see your love story featured on our blog and social media write us today! To submit your story send an e-mail to [email protected] with the subject line Book Store Love Stories. You are welcome to attach a photo that you don’t mind us using for marketing purposes.

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Bookstore Love Stories continues with this lovely story from Phil and Susan! Remember you can continue to send us your stories!

by Phil and Susan

We met at Vroman’s in 1993, upstairs before the area was re-arranged.  In those days the store sponsored travel presentations, and that evening of August 2 we were both present for a slide show on Indonesia.  We had casually noticed each other across the room during the program and later struck up a conversation over books, then met for coffee.  Since then we have been together for over 23 years and married for eleven.  Vroman’s will always be a special place to us, and we still celebrate our “meeting anniversary” along with our wedding anniversary.  One of us given to compose limericks, came up with some words in memory of the occasion:

There once was a guy name of Phil With some time in a bookstore to kill. He met a nice chick But had to ask quick. She responded … “For coffee, I will“

If you’d like to see your love story featured on our blog and social media write us today! To submit your story send an e-mail to [email protected] with the subject line Book Store Love Stories. You are welcome to attach a photo that you don’t mind us using for marketing purposes.

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Hi Friends! Today, in the lead up to and in honor of Valentine’s Day we are startinga new series called Book Store Love Stories.

Bookstores are great meeting places. They are places to meet up with friends, your book club, a place to spend time with family. All true but what about a place to find love? Recently, we put the call out for your stories of love in our bookstore. Maybe it was a meet cute, a first date or a first kiss. Maybe Vroman’s is just a happy, special place for you to spend time with your loved one. We wanted to hear them all! We were enchanted by the stories we received. Very sweet & most certainly heart warmers. We hope you enjoy them as much as we have.

We are still accepting stories, so please don’t hesitate to send us yours!

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Natalie wrote to us with this sweet story about her supportive boyfriend and a trip to see her favorite author at Vroman’s!

by Natalie

I’ve been addicted to Jennifer Weiner books since I read Good In Bed. So when she came to Vroman’s to promote her new book at the time, The Next Best Thing, there was NO WAY I was going to miss it. I was dating my boyfriend at the time who was only into surfing and anything that had to do with being outdoors and nowhere near a book. While I could stay cooped up for hours reading a book, he got fidgety after five minutes of sitting down. When no one wanted to drive out to Vroman’s with me to go meet my idol, I was bummed but still willing to drive the hour (in traffic) to Pasadena to hear her read and hopefully meet her.

I told him I was headed there alone and he offered to come. I told him, “but you hate books, and you hate my chic books even more.”

He shrugged and told me that he didn’t want me to have to drive alone. So he drove me to Vroman’s and even stood in line with me so he could take a picture on his phone (mine had died—of course) of Jennifer and I. While she read and talked about her book he paid attention and didn’t fidget even once. After he took the picture he even posted the picture to his Facebook. I was so surprised by how much he paid attention and how he was almost into it as much as I was. When I asked him what was up he just said, “I was happy to see you so happy and excited.” After that I knew we would get married and two years later we did. He has been the best thing in the world since (even better than Jennifer Weiner— sorry Jen!

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If you’d like to see your love story featured on our blog and social media write us today! To submit your story send an e-mail to [email protected] with the subject line Book Store Love Stories. You are welcome to attach a photo that you don’t mind us using for marketing purposes.

[thepenguinpress]

“Moshfegh quickly established herself as an important new voice in the literary world, and her concerns for those isolated not only in the margins of society but within the physical confines of the body itself mirrored the work of brilliant predecessors like Mary Gaitskill, Christine Schutt and, in some ways, Eileen Myles.”- @nytimes (photo by @penguinusa) . . . #bookstagram #winter #cozy #amreading #books #nyc #reading #fiction #coffee

[epicreads]

Can You Recognize these YA Books from Extreme Close Ups?

Take the quiz!!!!

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Share you LOVE story with us!! 

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Ours too!! 😍📚

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Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

(via bookmania)

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Listen to a New Book

Give the gift of an audiobook this holiday season - perfect for those situations when you’re feeling the itch to read but you’ve got your hands full with something else (knitting, cooking, gardening, kids, commuting - anything!).

Knitlandia, written & narrated by Clara Parkes

The Red Bandanna, written & narrated by Tom Rinaldi

Avid Reader, written & narrated by Robert Gottlieb

Eleanor and Hick by Susan Quinn, read by Kimberly Farr

Walk Through Walls, written & narrated by Marina Abramovic

Lucky Bastard, written & narrated by Joe Buck

Big Cats by Holiday Reinhorn

The Book of Joy, written by His Holiness the Dalai Lama & Archbishop Desmond Tutu, read by Douglas Carlton Abrams

Rogue Heroes, written and narrated by Ben Macintyre

You Can’t Touch My Hair by Phoebe Robinson of @2dopequeens, read by Phoebe Robinson, Jessica Williams, and John @hodgman

Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis by Anne Rice, read by Simon Vance

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story by Alexander Freed, read by Jonathan Davis

A Lowcountry Heart by Pat Conroy, read by Scott Brick

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COMING TOMORROW!!! It goes live at 7am, with more than 300 (wayyy more than ever before) of our favorite books of the year. We can’t wait to share it with you!!

– Petra

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This event is going to be so much fun! We are so excited to spend the evening talking about FOOD! Want to join us? Grab a few tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/vromans-presents-chef-mario-batali-in-conversation-with-russ-parsons-tickets-27355839051