The Book Wench

Nestled in a cozy strip in Midtown Columbus, Georgia, lies one of my favorite spots. Columbus Bound Bookshop, owned by the wonderful Khristina Gallagher, is worth the cross-Columbus trek. Situated between a cute pet groomer and an art gallery, merely a stone’s throw from Midtown Coffee, Columbus Bound is definitely the best place for the bookish denizens of this mid-sized military town.

As a frequent customer of the cozy bookshop, I knew I wanted to celebrate Columbus Bound for National Independent Bookstore Day. But I wanted to do more than just tell people to go visit the shop. I wanted to know more about it, and about Khristina herself, so that I could share that with the community. Ahead of National Independent Bookstore Day, I arranged to meet with Khristina before the store opened for the day so we could chat.

Khristina officially opened Columbus Bound in November 2024 and, since then, it has become a staple of the Columbus community – both as a place to visit and as a source of joy and cultural and community enrichment. As Khristina states on the bookshop’s website, the community and its culture are extremely important to her and the other members of the CBB family.

Khristina explained that she had grown up in Columbus but moved away more than twenty years ago, returning to the city with her family in 2021. Trying to figure out what she wanted to do for work in Columbus, Khristina spent the next couple of years doing volunteer work trying to narrow down her interests and see what grabbed her attention.

It was during this time that she got the idea of opening an independent bookstore. While she had never previously nursed the dream of owning a bookstore (like many of us do), she had always loved books and reading and had enjoyed visiting the local bookstore in Athens, Georgia, where she lived before returning to Columbus. Her family was supportive of the idea and rallied around her as she began to do her research and attend relevant courses in preparation for owning her own bookish business.

Khristina, I discovered, was seriously determined and wholly practical when planning CBB, even down to the name of the shop itself. She made sure to nail down the research, both on the book side and the business side. In May of 2024, Khristina started doing pop-ups in Columbus, to gauge community interest and see what sort of books were in demand and what relevant events would work best for the locals. Building community ties and brand awareness was extremely important to her, especially leading up to the opening of the brick-and-mortar store itself. Finally, in November, Columbus Bound Bookshop became a reality.

After she explained the process leading up to the opening of CBB, I asked Khristina the question that most of us book lovers want to know: What is the best part of being a bookstore owner?

Her answer was immediate: “It is the nicest work environment you could ever be in.”

She went on to explain that when people go into bookstores they are either already in a good mood (because duh, books) or are trying to get into a good mood (again, duh, books). Working in a bookstore you get to be a part of that good mood, that process toward bookish happiness. What’s more, Khristina continued, is that you get to talk about books all day long “which is just delightful, right? You learn about new books. You get to talk about books you really like. It’s great…You get to meet people who care about the same thing you do, right? And I mean, what a joyful experience.”

((I later spoke to one of Khristina’s employees, Amelia, she agreed with that sentiment, stating “When people come in and they’ve read a book or they want to read a book, I feel like that’s such a great conversation starter. I love that everybody has different reasons for coming in but with the same heart and purpose.” The connection between bookseller and CBB visitor is palpable and laced with excitement over something we all love: books.))

Then Khristina and I spoke about the hardest part of being a bookstore owner and she determined that selecting what should go on the shelves would probably be the hardest part. While some big titles and industry favorites are obviously going to be among the first to go up, determining what else to stock can be difficult amongst the hundreds of thousands of titles available on the market. How can you know what is going to sell and what isn’t unless you stock it and find out?

((This segued our conversation slightly toward a recent bestseller that, funny enough, originated in Columbus. Local author Allen Levi published Theo of Golden in December of 2025 and it quickly skyrocketed to the top of the New York Times Bestseller list. The titular Golden is actually based on the city of Columbus and locals have been thoroughly enthralled by this new release.

Levi is not the first Columbusite to do well as an author, however: Carson McCullers published her first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, in 1940 and established herself as one of the South’s most well-known authors. You can find both Theo of Golden and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter on the shelves at Columbus Bound Bookshop or order it online from CBB’s online shop.))

The next thing Khristina and I talked about was the importance of community involvement to her and the rest of the CBB family. If her background in volunteering informed anything about working on Columbus Bound, it was that Khristina wanted the Columbus community to be the center point of the shop: “I love knowing who our neighbors are.” And here, she doesn’t just mean the other businesses in the quaint midtown strip where CBB is located. She means the individuals that make up the city of Columbus altogether. She wanted CBB to be a place where members of the community could feel safe and happy outside of their homes. She also wanted to provide a space for locals to love and support as a hometown venue. In doing this, Khristina, her family, and Columbus Bound Bookshop became very involved in hosting events for the public, like book clubs and game nights. Khristina’s mother, fondly known as Grammy Trish, even hosts Story Time for children at the shop every Wednesday at 11am.

All in all, Khristina loves having the store be a part of life in the city and a part of the lives of the members of the community at large. ((For more information on the CBB-hosted events and book clubs, check out their website))

I went on to ask Khristina the standard, time-tested question: What was your favorite book (in 2025). Without pause she responded with Buffalo Hunter Hunter stating “I read a lot of other good books in 2025 but that was the one that I read that just gob smacked me, it was the most unusual…I would not have pegged myself to enjoy it and I loved it. I thought it was so great.” She goes on to caution that she would not recommend it to everyone as it does feature a lot of gore.

((Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones has been on my list as well for quite some time and her endorsement of it just moved it higher on my tbr. I think I’ll add it to my Post Masters TBR for 2026.))

Khristina named a few other great titles that she has read so far in 2026, including A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L Peck, Yellowface by R. F. Kuang, and The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami. All three books (and Buffalo Hunter Hunter) can be found on the shelves at Columbus Bound Books or online at their website.

If Khristina had to choose a favorite event for the shop, she would definitely choose the shop’s many book clubs. While she does not run all of them, she is present for a lot of them and states that “if your favorite part of the job is to sit and talk to random people about all kinds of books, how much more fun is it to sit and then talk about a specific book with other people who also read the book?”

Book clubs are a big part of her life because not only does she have two of the CBB-hosted book clubs that she runs ((There are six CBB-hosted book clubs in all)) but her family also has a family-wide book club that is entirely separate from the shop. Suffice it to say, Khristina is busy reading multiple books every month. Which can only benefit her position as a bookshop owner whose favorite part is talking about books.

I asked Khristina which author would be a dream to have come visit the store, either as a spotlighted guest or as a customer and she mentioned both Ocean Vuong, who wrote On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, and Kristin Hannah, who wrote The Nightingale and The Women.

We discussed whether or not Khristina would ever consider moving to a bigger space or opening a second location and she provided a very emphatic “No.” When coming up with CBB, she intentionally pursued a smaller space with no intention of expanding in that way. She did not create CBB for the want of money or renown. She wanted to provide, as mentioned above, a place for Columbusites to gather and share a love of books. If the demands of the community necessitated another space, she said she could possibly help someone else open a separate store in another part of town (like Old Town in Northern Columbus — far removed from her own store so that they can both flourish).

I had such a great time talking with Khristina that we ended up running our conversation all the way to the opening of the store for the day. It was such a pleasure to get to talk books, bookstores, and community ventures with Kristina and I hope that you guys get the chance to go talk with her too.

If you live in or near Columbus, Georgia, I implore you to go visit Columbus Bound Bookshop in Midtown Columbus. For more information, visit the CBB website or shoot me an email at thatbookwench@gmail.com if you have any questions!