By Jorge Casuso

April 29, 2016 -- Saturday is Independent Bookstore Day across the country, but the closest celebration you'll find to Santa Monica will be technically across the border in Brentwood.

The Diesel Bookstore in the Brantwood Country Mart may have a Santa Monica postal address, but it's technically a Los Angeles business.

Still, it's the only general independent bookstore bordering a city that once boasted two iconic independent bookstores -- Midnight Special, which shut down in 2004, and Hennessey + Ingalls, widely considered the best art and architecture bookstore in the Western United States, which closed last year and recently reopend in Downtown Los Angeles.

Both bookstores were victims of Downtown Santa Monica's skyrocketing rents. ("Midnight Special's Final Hour," May 8, 2004 and "Iconic Bookstore Closes Final Chapter in Santa Monica," September 15, 2016).

"Independent bookstores are unique cultural institutions, businesses that people love to have in their town," said Bob Evens, who owns Diesel with his partner Alison Reid. "People who have them and lose them always miss them."

Diesel -- which opened six months after Brentwood's iconic Dutton's Bookstore closed in 2008 -- will sell one-of-a-kind, limited-edition items on Saturday and host a science fiction discussion, among other attractions.

Once a Mecca for book lovers, Santa Monica claimed 17 independent and used bookstores in 1990, with more than half a dozen on and around the Three Street Promenade and others scattered across the beach city's neighborhoods.

Today, fewer than a half dozen independent bookstores remain. One of them, Angel City Books and Records near the Venice border, has survived in large part due to Santa Monica's popularity as an international destination, said owner Rocco Ingala ("Santa Monica's Last Used Bookstore Thrives the Old-Fashioned Way," March 11, 2013).

"I'm the only (independent store) in the city that sells literature," said Ingala, who opened the store 18 years ago at 218 Pier Avenue. "It's not like the old days, but the store is doing well.

"Santa Monica is a special spot in the world," he said. "Half of the people who come in on any given day are international guests, and it's the first time they come into my store."

Santa Monica still is home to a few independent specialty stores such as Hi De Ho Comics on Lincoln Boulevard and Barry R. Levin Science Fiction and Fantasy Books and Thunderbolt Spiritual Books, both on Santa Monica Boulevard.

But if what you're looking for is a Renaissance play or Victorian novel, the only place outside of Barnes and Noble or Angel City Books is the Santa Monica Public Library, which houses a good used bookstore run by Friends of the Library.

For those wondering if independent bookstores are worth finding, here's what Independent Bookstore Day sponsors have to say.

"Independent bookstores are not just stores, they’re community centers and local anchors run by passionate readers. They are entire universes of ideas that contain the possibility of real serendipity. They are lively performance spaces and quiet places where aimless perusal is a day well spent."