📚 Philly’s bookstore boom | Morning Newsletter
♻️ And an expanding compost network.
The Morning Newsletter
Start your day with the Philly news you need and the stories you want all in one easy-to-read newsletter
Good morning, Philly. While the Eagles face the Titans and triple-digit heat in Nashville today, we’ve got showers with highs in the upper 70s.
Our main Sunday read highlights a surge in bookshops across the Philadelphia region.
Further on, learn about an expanding network of curbside composting.
— Paola Pérez (morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)
If someone forwarded you this email, sign up for free here.
New bookstores are popping off from Fishtown to Manayunk and West Chester.
Books are flying off the shelves, even with the growing competition. The phenomenon mirrors a national trend of physical book sales outpacing online retail in the past five years. Libraries are seeing a resurgence in patronage, too.
Sellers told The Inquirer’s Jess Rohan that a hunger for community, a desire to support local businesses, and screen fatigue are fueling the boom. Books also offer an escape.
In their own words: “There is a bit of backlash to the doomscrolling,” Abington’s library director told Rohan. “People just want to tuck themselves into a different world,” said a Bordentown shop owner.
Hear from readers and bookstore owners alike on the return to print, and see a map of bookstore openings in the region since 2025.
📖 Plus: We asked local booksellers what they’re reading and enjoying. Here are their favorites.
For many enthusiasts, what began as a backyard experiment to collect compostable material later grew into a way of life to reduce waste and improve food system circularity.
Curbside compost is trending in the Philly suburbs, as a growing system of providers and composters work together towards what one compost aficionado calls “a better, more sustainable future of a full-circle food system.”
♻️ Composting is a process that recycles and breaks down food and other organic matter into soil-like material. The brown stuff is then used in farms and gardens to fertilize soil for new crops.
🍎 In Delco, many residents’ scraps are ending up mixed into a five-acre site at Linvilla Orchards.
🗑️ As more municipalities adopt composting programs, purveyors say the practice is becoming a key part of the region’s waste management strategy.
Inquirer Local reporter Denali Sagner has the story.
What you should know today
A group of clergy, political leaders, and activists gathered at the Philadelphia ICE office on Friday in the wake of a deportation officer’s suicide, condemning what they said was the agency’s destruction of lives both inside and outside its ranks.
A police officer at Temple University is under internal investigation for allegedly making racist comments to young Black males riding dirt bikes on campus.
Protesters gathered near Lincoln Financial Field ahead of Ed Sheeran’s concert on Saturday evening. It was his first show since Macklemore was dropped as an opener following the rapper’s pro-Palestinian remarks onstage.
As measles cases spread in Pennsylvania, some Philadelphia-area parents are opting to vaccinate kids early, delay daycare, and avoid Lancaster County.
A developer has sued the Upper Merion Township Board of Supervisors over its rejection of a proposed 4.6 million-square-foot data center campus.
The Trump administration’s plan to overhaul SNAP would force Pennsylvania to pay more for the federal food program and jeopardize those in need, Gov. Josh Shapiro’s office says. That’s a price the state is not ready to pay.
Former Philadelphia labor leader and longtime Democratic power broker John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty has reportedly changed his party registration to Republican. President Donald Trump commuted his prison sentence for a corruption conviction earlier this month.
A mixed-income apartment project in Center City received its final approval after almost 11 years of delays. Construction will begin in a matter of weeks.
🎤 Here’s Tommy Rowan with a look back at Atlantic City crowning the first deaf Miss America.
Heather Whitestone was not the first deaf contestant, but she remains the only deaf woman to have won.
At 18 months old, she contracted a serious bacterial infection that damaged the nerves in her ears and led to a total loss of hearing.
A reporter would later ask Whitestone about the potential challenges she faced fulfilling such a public-facing role.
“I think I’m doing just fine,” she said with a wry smile. “I mean, look at us now.”
❓Pop quiz
Despite rumors, Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee and Books in Germantown clarified that it has no issues with this NFL player:
A) Micah Parsons
B) Colin Kaepernick
C) Jalen Hurts
D) Josh Allen
Think you know? Check your answer.
What we’re ...
🍕 Craving: Wood-fired Neapolitan pie from one of the Philly suburbs’ best shops.
🐦⬛ Wondering: When the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site, now shuttered for two years, is expected to reopen.
🧠 Unlocking: The relationships between words to solve this week’s Pillars.
🧵 Admiring: A Bayeux Tapestry that has returned to public view for the first time in decades, among the best art we saw this week.
🏖️ Reviewing: The Inquirer’s Amy S. Rosenberg made 10 predictions on how the Shore summer would go. Here’s how she did.
🧩 Unscramble the anagram
Hint: Philly bandleader of Japanese Breakfast a.k.a....
CELLE HUMANIZER
Email us if you know the answer. We’ll select a reader at random to shout out here.
Cheers to Beth Dombkowski who correctly guessed Saturday’s answer: La Colombe. The Philly-founded coffee company is launching a canned matcha latte as the drink’s popularity grows.
Years in the making, Philadelphia Ballet officially opened its sparkling new headquarters Friday morning. Culture writer Peter Dobrin reports.
🎶 Today’s song goes like this: “Is it for peace and plenty, or is it for the sacred face? / It’s all for the love of you.”
👋🏽 Thanks for starting your day here. Have a great one, and go Birds.
By submitting your written, visual, and/or audio contributions, you agree to The Inquirer’s Terms of Use, including the grant of rights in Section 10.
