Armadillo's Pillow

The story

You don't trek up to 6753 North Sheridan Road looking for a glossy bestseller; you come when you want to disappear into a room that smells like heavy incense and aging paper. Owners Betsy Boemmel and Matt Ebert opened Armadillo’s Pillow over thirty years ago after working at a center for adults with developmental disabilities, launching the shop on a tight budget. They took the store's name from John Irving’s novel *A Prayer for Owen Meany*, where a stuffed armadillo is passed between friends as a symbol of reciprocity—an echo of passing along books that someone else has already read and loved.

Step past the blue awning and hand-painted signs—and check the outdoor alcove shelf for $1 bargain specials—and standard retail logic dissolves. The shelving mixes occult lore, esoterica, and psychology directly into history, philosophy, and literary fiction. Narrow aisles run under hanging star lights, packed with vintage paperbacks, hard-to-find out-of-print titles, and academic texts brought in for trade by Loyola and Northwestern students, alongside folk art, candles, and handcrafted jewelry.

The shop is intentionally engineered for slow wandering rather than rapid search-and-retrieval. Built-in chairs are tucked directly into the corners of the stacks so you can pull a forgotten text on Eastern religion or obscure folklore and settle in to the background hum of soft jazz. Don't expect a polished catalog or streamlined rows—the chaos of discovery is the entire point.