Suffice it to say that the quirky Xenophile is a place that grew from a lifetime love of books, especially science fiction.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you walk into our science fiction section, I believe it\u2019s probably the best science fiction collection west of the Mississippi River, and probably more than that,\u201d said Woolfolk, who has spent 50 of his 76 years collecting books.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first book I ever purchased was the \u2018History of the Spanish American War,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cI bought it for $3.95, and my dad thought it was a dumb idea. But I thought it was a really cool book. By the time I got out of college, I knew that someday I would have a bookstore.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Xenophile-sign\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Xenophile-sign.jpg\")
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Brian Sheldon, left, and Steve Woolfolk\u00a0are proud of their Richland bookstore, which carries an estimated 80,000 books.<\/p>\n
| Photo by Jeff MorrowOut-of-the-way bookstore<\/strong><\/p>\n Woolfolk\u2019s collection has been featured in various media outlets over the years. For a long time it had been crammed into his Kennewick home, which had \u201c4,000 square feet of books … with 18 inches of space in between shelves.\u201d<\/p>\n Woolfolk, a third generation Hanford employee, a radiological engineer, traveled around with his own nuclear library for work because it was too hard to find one.<\/p>\n He made sure to include that library in the bookstore.<\/p>\n As he neared retirement age, Woolfolk felt it was time to open his bookstore. He found land in the Horn Rapids Industrial Park, just off the Vantage Highway, to build his dream bookstore in 2018.<\/p>\n The $500,000 project was completed in late 2019 with the help of Sheldon.<\/p>\n A retired military advisor, Sheldon owned a bookstore in Richland\u2019s Uptown Shopping Center until 1998 called Sheddes and Peasant, Booksellers, which later was called Sheldon Library.<\/p>\n Sheldon and Woolfolk met through a mutual friend and decided to become partners in Xenophile.<\/p>\n \u201cHe has his books in here. I have mine,\u201d Woolfolk said.<\/p>\n They collect revenue from their own books, but they share the revenue if they both own something.<\/p>\n \u201cI had been retired 10 years, and I was listless,\u201d Sheldon said. \u201cThen the store opportunity came up with this empty lot. I got to help build this building. And I get to organize things.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile Steve is the collector, I am the display,\u201d Sheldon said. \u201cYou know, Star Trek was right. Space is the final frontier,\u201d referring to the need for more of it to house their books and collections.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the one concern the two have about their store: A lot of people around the Mid-Columbia still don\u2019t know it exists.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the biggest problem. Nobody knows we are here. It definitely is a backwater location,\u201d Woolfolk said.<\/p>\n Sheldon said they both looked at several buildings, but \u201cthey were all too expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n A cat, an unusual name<\/strong><\/p>\n After opening the store, the next step was to find a cat because two things are bad for books: water and mice.<\/p>\n The black cat they adopted, Sonia Lovecraft (named after the wife of science fiction and horror writer H.P. Lovecraft), has the run of the store with scratching posts tucked into every nook and cranny.<\/p>\n