Don’t judge this bookstore by its cover

As a cool spring rain splatters the sidewalk, dots the windows and leaves a mist of spray fanning behind cars that race north and south outside, Jessica Harrison-Poteet arranges books.

The books come in sizes from small enough to fit in a pocket, to bulky, leather bound and requiring a shelf of their own.

They are the ubiquitous and pragmatic wares — and also the eclectic, parochial and marginal — that make up the Bookishly Happy bookstore at 2415 N. Government Way.

“I have a pretty good selection in pretty much every category,” Harrison-Poteet says.

She is musing.

Her musing is prompted by more than a week of not just rummaging through her inventory, but rearranging shelves in the compact, 800 square-foot storefront that is part of a drive up mall housing an insurance agency, Christian reading room, a salon and a German sweet shop.

Browsers Uncommon Books, as the store was called before Harrison-Poteet and her husband bought the business in March and changed its name, had been a Coeur d’Alene staple for 33 years.

Browsers owner John Hiller took pride in the store’s wide variety. After online shopping took its toll on similar businesses nationwide, Hiller took satisfaction in having lower prices than big-shouldered online bookstores that often charged more in shipping alone than the cost of the purchase.

Harrison-Poteet plans to keep it that way.

“We’re cheaper than Amazon,” she says.

She recently acquired an app for her phone and tablet that helped her inventory, price and keep track of the books in her store that included good condition volumes with unbroken spines to books drafty with use.

A completed leather-bound volume of Encyclopedia Britannicas from the 1800s are among the books she wants to move to make room for more.

“I’m taking offers on those,” she says.

Hardback books from Steinbeck to Louis L’Amour greet visitors on two shelves. They range in price from a few bucks to more.

“They are frowned upon by collectors because they don’t have a dust jacket,” Harrison-Poteet says.

After spending most of her adult life working in the corporate world, Harrison-Poteet bought the bookstore in sort of a fulfillment of a childhood dream.

“Isn’t it every kid’s dream to buy a book store?” she asks.

Growing up in Coeur d’Alene, she spent countless hours at the city library, then on Lakeside Avenue, and after her grandfather died, it was his vast book collection that she sought.

“We didn’t care about inheritance; we care about the books,” she says.

She visited Browsers occasionally, and when she saw a small sign advertising the business was for sale, she made a move.

“My husband thought I was crazy,” she says.

She still works in the Spokane Valley, but the store’s new hours are from 10 to 7 most days.

And the sign inside the front door of Bookishly Happy advertising a 25 percent off rainy day sale isn’t meant to be quaint.

When it rains, her books go on sale.

All of them.

“Everyone needs a good book on a rainy day,” she says.