Gianna LaMorte, assistant director and sales manager of University of Texas Press, is in the middle of a 168-hour (7 days), 30-bookstore tour of the West Coast. The tour began in Los Angeles, Calif., at The Last Bookstore and will conclude in Seattle, Wash. LaMorte's stops have included Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena and Book Soup in L.A., several of the Diesel, A Bookstore locations, and Green Apple Books and City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, Calif., with stops in Oregon and Washington still to come. Along the way, LaMorte has been promoting upcoming University of Texas Press titles, such as the memoir Don't Suck, Don't Die: Giving Up Vic Chesnutt by Kristin Hersh, and posting about her travels on twitter and Instagram. She called City Lights Bookstore the "dream girl" of bookstores: "smart, pretty, and a little bit withholding," and said that Omnivore Books on Food in San Francisco had "an incredible selection of cookbooks."
As of yesterday, LaMorte had reached Alexander Book Company in San Francisco, store #20 on her tour.