In reply to a recent essay, Mayhem said “I can definitely still remember my first few second hand bookstores. Those are indelible.” Moi aussi! I may forget people’s names and faces, or why I am standing in the kitchen, or just where I hung my cane, etc. That is because my brain seethes with memories that actually matter1, memories which involve books, and as a corollary, bookstores2.
Don’t believe me? Herewith, some accounts of used bookstores that were very important to teen me.
When a young bibliophile, I soon discovered that used books are cheaper than new books3. Given a fixed amount of money to spend (my allowance), it was obvious that I could afford more used books than new books. A few years later, I realized that books go out of print. As I’ve mentioned before, regular bookstores are limited to books that are in print (and for practical reasons, only a subset of those books). Used bookstores offer access to books otherwise impossible to purchase.
The first used bookstore I remember is the Book Barn, located at 12 King Street North, Waterloo. Established by Mark Shapiro and later run by Randy and Sylvia Hannigan, the Book Barn was a conveniently short hike, a mere 1.7 km from UWaterloo, where my father taught. The Book Barn got a considerable fraction of my allowance; one particularly memorable purchase was my second Poul Anderson MMPB, There Will Be Time. I was sad to see it go.
The Book Barn was the only used bookstore to which I was introduced by my parents. I was quick to generalize. However, I was not quick to see the utility of the Yellow Pages in this matter. I tended to rely on random wandering and dumb luck.
One such discovery was the Book Nook, located at 77 Ontario Street South, which, as previously mentioned, I first noticed when I was out on a school excursion4. I regret to say that I cannot remember the name of the woman who owned and operated the Book Nook—I don’t think she ever introduced herself to me—but she tolerated my complete lack of social skills, my weekly perusal of every single paperback in the science fiction and fantasy section, and the small change I presented in exchange for treasures such as a battered copy of the Berkley Medallion edition of Laumer’s Greylorn.
I cannot recall how I discovered KW Bookstore, founded in 19755 and still located at 308 King St. West, Kitchener, Ontario. It then held, and still holds, a treasure trove of books and magazines. One’s browsing experience was greatly enhanced by the then-owners’ refusal to engage in such effete practices as arranging books in alphabetical order by author’s surname. Books were sorted purely by genre and the order in which the owners had bought them. Books were also double and tripled stacked. This taught me the value of relentless thoroughness in browsing, as there was otherwise no telling what treasures were hidden at the back of the shelf.
Among its many noteworthy qualities is the fact that KW Bookstore is the only Kitchener-Waterloo used bookstore from my teen years that is still in operation6.
The purchase I most remember: walking in as cases of books, the proceeds of an estate sale, were being stacked. The owners really didn’t want to go through each box, so offered me the box on the top for five bucks if I’d take it away with me immediately. Inside I found an almost complete run of Travis McGee novels, from The Deep Blue Good-by to The Dreadful Lemon Sky. Score!
I discovered Harry Kremer’s Now & Then, which was then located at 103 Queen South, Kitchener, when my family and I walked past it on our way to a movie. I was irked when my parents refused to let me enter and browse on the absurd pretext that the movie we were planning on seeing was going to begin soon. Well, it also helped that the store wasn’t open.7 Because I didn’t think to note the address or look in the Yellow Pages, it took me two years to find the store again.
Now & Then at that time was a bit of an odd duck, in that it sold a wider assortment of goods than most used bookstores: books, but also direct sales comics, games, and used records8. For me, Now & Then was about the books, but it’s more likely that if you’ve heard of Now & Then, it is in the context of it being one of Canada’s first direct sales comic stores. It’s no exaggeration to say that Harry and his Now & Then were a Kitchener institution and it was a tragedy when he died in 2002.
I can’t remember the first book in the first sack of books I hauled home from Now & Then, but there is a purchase I do remember. I and three other members of WatSFiC, UWaterloo’s SFF club, were buying books for the club’s library9. A diversity of opinion precluded consensus. Even numbers produced deadlocks. We had only two unanimous decisions: everyone agreed we should buy John Bellairs’ The Face in the Frost and we all agreed that we should NOT buy Pel “Lionel Fanthorpe” Torro’s Galaxy 666.
Those are the local used bookstores that consumed much of my disposable income half a century ago. Did used bookstores play a similar role for you? Please reminisce about them in comments below.
- You might think “consciously dating people with the same given name so as to make remembering it easier” is a brilliant hack. It is. Telling one of them that one of their paramount qualities is having the same name as their predecessors and inevitable replacements turns out to be injudicious. ↩︎
- I will limit myself to Waterloo Region used bookstores. I’ve been to bookstores in many cities and countries by now, most notably Hay-on-Wye. Reactor does not have enough hard drive space for an in-depth discussion of Hay-on-Wye’s used bookstores.
I was tempted to include Bakka despite it being in Toronto, but it deserves an essay of its own. Enjoy! ↩︎ - Imagine my fury when in a San Francisco used bookstore I discovered a 35 cent MMPB that was priced at 75 cents. The cheek! ↩︎
- We were mapping downtown Kitchener for a school project. ↩︎
- Although I am told it was actually a continuation of an earlier used bookstore, founded in the 1950s. ↩︎
- Kitchener-Waterloo has other used bookstores, including Old Goat Books and A Second Look Books. These were founded after the period in question. ↩︎
- Not as much of an impediment as one might expect. 103 Queen South was an old building with many quirks, one of which was that the mail slot for Now & Then’s unit was big enough that a skinny kid could reach his arm through to unlock the door. Owner Harry Kremer only realized this after he noticed stock was vanishing after closing and parked himself inside in the dark to see if he could discover why.
I hasten to add that I was not that skinny kid. I was the person who rented that space after Harry, when I discovered that the modification he made to the lock to prevent repeats of the exploit made it possible for me to lock myself into my own store.
If I had a nickel for every time I’d been locked into my own building, I’d have fifteen cents. ↩︎ - As I recall, records were in the basement unit, which had Harry’s mother behind the register. ↩︎
- Since broken up, thanks to WUSA’s relentless efforts to that end. ↩︎
Hole in the Wall Books in Falls Church Virginia.
No idea how many books I bought there over the years between 1981 when I got a driver’s license and when the owners retired in 2019.
Whenever I visited my grandparents in Sausalito, I’d walk my legs numb exploring San Francisco’s used bookstores. There was one in particular I liked. I cannot remember its name, but it was _three stories tall_.
I visited it after the World Series quake [1]. The shelves stayed up, but apparently the books on them vibrated off and onto the floor. Reshelving the mess was a bit of a chore.
1: My grandparents bought their house assuming at some point there’d be a big quake. No structural damage to speak of, but they did lose a saucer.
Was it Alexander Book Company? Or City Lights? San Francisco had more than one three-story bookstore :). Both of those were places I visited more than once.
If anyone is ever in the area of Raleigh, North Carolina in the US, visit Readers Corner. It’s been open for over forty years in the same location and is wonderful.
https://www.abebooks.com/Readers-Corner%2C-Inc-Raleigh-NC-U.S.A/354845/sf#about
https://www.hillsboroughstreet.org/go/readers-corner
In the late 1990s, I was making my way north from Carbondale, PA, towards civilization when I spotted what looked like an immense bookstore of some sort. Unfortunately, I was on a moving bus and hurling myself out onto the highway to make my way across country seemed ill-advised for a number of reasons. Even more egregiously, I had greatly underestimated how many books I needed for the trip [1] and had run out of reading material. All I could do squash my face against the bus window to keep the store in sight for as long as possible.
1: I assumed the US bus stations would have magazine stands where I could buy The Economist or something. They did not.
Scotland’s greatest bookshop is Leakey’s in Inverness, of course. Housed in a former Gaelic church, this has stained-glass windows, a spiral staircase, log fire, and a great many of exactly the kind of books James Nicoll seeks.
They no longer exist, but I was lucky enough to live near Oxford Books (new/used) and Oxford, Too (used) in Atlanta, Georgia. Utterly amazing bookstores.
John King Books in Detroit, at least four stories with an adjacent building just for art books. I love going there just to discover books I wasn’t even looking for although the way the shelves flow alphabetically is just bizarre.
Charles Duley(?) Books in Bell Street, London NW1. Long gone, but it was between the main block of my school and the new science block that opened when I was 12, and I bought huge amounts of old SF paperbacks and copies of New Worlds there between 1964 and 1971, and for a few years after when I worked nearby. After that I got there a lot less often, and eventually they closed, I think after the owner died. There were two other book shops in Bell Street, but all are now done due to gentrification etc.
Fantasy Centre in Holloway Road, before that in Kilburn, and before that (late sixties and early seventies) in Westbourne Grove W2. One of the best-known used SF shops in London owned by people who really knew what they were doing. Got some good stuff from them over the years, unfortunately also gone due to horrendous rent and rates rises plus people retiring and dying. Unfortunately Westbourne Grove was the only shop I could get to easily, the later shops were always a pain to get to, a long bike or bus ride from home, so I didn’t get in as often as I’d like.
Daunt Books in Marylebone High Street – a book shop specializing in travel books that in its early years used to have a lot of used books of all types in the lower part of the shop, handy when I was working down the road from the late seventies to 2013 but gradually went up-market and dropped the used books. Still in business so far as I know. The Oxfam book shop in Marylebone High Street was also pretty good, but also went up market with less interesting stuff, and a couple of other charity shops in the area are now gone.
These days the book shops I get into the most are the Oxfam Book Shop in Portobello Road and the Amnesty Book Shop in King Street, Hammersmith, both of which usually have some SF. Given that I have pretty much run out of room for more books in my flat I’m not buying nearly as much as I used to…
The Book Barn at 41 W Main St, Niantic, CT has three locations but the main location is really fun to browse through.
In Western Massachusetts, two that we have are Raven Used Books in Northampton and Quaboag Book Shop in West Brookfield, both of which are dedicated to used books. North of the border there is Toadstool Bookshop, which has both new and used books, and has storefronts in two locations, Keene, NH, and Peterborough, NH. All very worth browsing in.
I also like Raven, but I have to give a shout-out to Grey Matter Books in Hadley.
And I somehow omitted mentioning the famous Montague Bookmill (slogan: “books you don’t need in a place you can’t find”) in Montague, MA, which, along with many used books, has the best selection of (non-Hallmark) cards, for people who still write to each other and stay in touch by postal mail.
I kept living in towns just barely large enough to have a B. Dalton or Waldenbooks in the local mall.
Once I got to college, I discovered Recycled Books and Records in Denton, TX, which boasted three floors of books, along with a section for “Books for Tall People” (a small shelf up by the ceiling) and a long-gone section for “Narcissism” (a set of old tri-fold department store dressing mirrors).
It’s been over a decade since I got to go there, and I miss it almost every day.
My favorite used bookstore experience was sadly one going out of business, selling books by the pound. Made out like a giant, kleptomaniac raccoon with an invisibility potion.
The Niantic Book Barn is one of my two current favorites; the other is the Strand in New York City. There was another one near New Haven, Whitlock’s Book Barn, which did not impress. Niantic is easier to get to than the Strand, as it doesn’t require a 2 hr ride on MetroNorth, followed by a ride on the 4 or 6 train.
In my youth, there was the Printer’s Devil not too far from my parents’ house. That closed decades ago, but it was a great place for sf paperbacks.
Whitlock’s big advantage for me was that it was basically on the route from NJ to my father’s house in Massachusetts, and I was driving up once a month. ALas, like all the other bookstores I named, it closed (just this year).
On the one hand, Powell’s Books in Portland, OR is not exclusively a used-book store (and there are now three of them plus a newly revived outpost at the airport),
Nonetheless, one of my all-time memories deserves note here – Josepha Sherman had come out from New York City for OryCon (she may in fact have been a GoH that year), and I managed to tag along with the little group that schlepped her over to Powell’s. We had passed through the lobby into the Literature Room, whereupon Josepha paused, spread her arms, lifted her eyes upward in a posture of great reverence, and uttered three immortal words in a voice clearly tinged with awe:
My memories of Powell’s are tinged with the memory of getting into their parking garage. The in/out ramp is very steep and has the tightest turn I can remember–we had a small car, and it took me a three-point turn going in and a *five*- point one going out to make the turn. (Not only is the turn tight, but one must be very careful of the support pillars right next to it!)
Johnson’s Used Bookstore in Springfield, Massachusetts. In addition to a wonderful stock of cheap books (or perhaps because of it), it became the place where Mark and I would meet every week in the summer between freshman and sophomore years in college. I would drive in from Chicopee; he would take the bus from Longmeadow. Alas, it closed in 1997 after 104 years in business. Also while we were in college, the Old Book Store in Northampton. which closed in 2022 after 64 years. And in New Jersey, we loved the Cranbury Book Worm, which closed in 2016 after about 50 years. Do you see a trend here? I’m not mentioning the ones I love now–it might jinx them!
The first one I remember was a long gone little green strip mall one near my school, the owner loved suggesting new titles to try based on what people liked, and I could trade in ones I’d read but didn’t want to keep for a small charge, hooking em young to build business I reckon. In hindsight I was carefully steered away from the full set of Gor along the top shelf – top shelf didn’t always mean quality!
Then there were the iconic ones around Auckland – Hard to Find then in Onehunga, Bookmark in Devonport, and some historical ones in Takapuna and Browns Bay. Long cycle rides or rare car visits for a few hard won titles.
Artie Bees in Wellington is one of the best in the country, an eclectic blend of new and old, and always a highlight of passing through.
I have vivid memories of a massive warehouse place when I got posted in 02 or 03 to Tulsa OK .. Gardner’s I think, where every book was simply priced as half the original cover price. I found a ton of unknown to me classic SFF works there for under a dollar each, flew in with one suitcase, flew out with two. I still have a big shelf of Alan Dean Foster and Larry Niven from there.
In the UK, my regular haunts would be Skoob books in the Brunswick centre, the Notting Hill book exchange, and the few survivors on Charing Cross Rd before they finally died out during the 2010s.
A shout out to Leakeys in Inverness as well, and I remember a good one in Edinburgh around the Grassmarket area.
There was a used book store in downtown Colorado Springs that I used to go to in the 1980s. Had a nice selection and the proprietor was an affable sort. You could buy books, or you could trade books. The exception was for Harlequin Romances. He originally started out at a “trade 1 for 2” which later became “1 for 3”. He never bought them, as they were a plague upon publishing…
There have been many fine used book shops in my life. I will limit myself.
The first used book shop I recall was a literal barn in southeastern Pennsylvanuia, converted to a three-story shop. I don’t recall the town, but it was not far from the Delaware border, somewhere in the vicinity of Chadd’s Ford and West Cheste. Our one visit to the place took place when I was about thirteen. I found a few things that did not impress me enough to remember them today, but my mother found an autographed copy of a book by Andrew Lang. Upon taking it to the counter she was careful not to mention the writing on the title page, and got it for about a dollar.
During my late teen years, we lived near Palo Alto, Califonria. Unsurprisingly, there were a number of used book shops near Stanford University — they all seemed to have been gone the last time I was there; their names have all left my mind. In the Spring of 1974, one of them had an excellent selection of Robert Sheckley mmpbs, which I swept up and overdosed on.
From 1976 to August of last year, I lived in the East Bay, mostly Berkeley and Alameda. Berkeley had, when I arrived, a veritable plethora of shops. The champions were Shakespeare and Company, at the corner of Telegraph Avenue and Haste Street and — but I’ll get to that in a moment. Shakespeare had a small but mighty SFF section. I bought my second set of The Lord of the Rings there, because I loved the Jack Gaughan covers — the Ace bootlegs.
Almost directly across Telegraph from Shakespeare was Moe’s. Moe Moskowitz was a true Berkeley character, a short bald Jew (this isn’t racism; if you talked to him long enough to get him off his business, he’d make sure you knew it) who was rarely if ever seen without a cheroot in his mouth. When Berkeley passed a law against smoking indoor in public buildings, he refused and, when cited, he sued on the grounds that the cigar was part of his business image, and won a compromise: he the right to chomp on the cigar in the store, but he had to go outside to light up. The original Moe’s was a dark and crowded building. The SFF books were in the semi-basement alongside the records.
Moe did not double-stack the paperbacks. His plan for dealing with not enough shelf space was to put the overflow in boxes at the foot of the shelves. When there was a gap in the shelves, he’d pull some books out of those boxes and jam them in. Did I mention he was short? To reach the upper shelves, he’d stand on the books in the boxes. I think it safe to say that Moe was not a true bibliofile. But I probably bought a few hundred books there in my years in the East Bay.
The last East Bay shop I’d like to mention is Grey Wolf. It was a strange little shop with no parking on a very busy artery street in San Leandro. Once one found a place to stash one’s ride, one entered this place of strangeness and wonder. Outside the door were bins of bargain books. One was full of Stephen King hardcovers, all pricet at $1. Inside was a maze where, if you could find the right area, you would find things you didn’t expect. I found my hardcover of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress there one afternoon. Alas, one day I arrived to find the gate locked and a sign saying that Grey Wolf was no more.
Last August, I moved to the Prortland (Oregon, not Maine) area. Here one finds Powell’s City of Books, as well as its satellite shops, including a little stall in the airport. Powell’s is not strictly speaking a used bookstore; it carries both used and new books, intermingled. Alas, I have committed to using my ebook reader, and not buying so many physical books, because all my shelves are full and there is nowhere I can put more of them: as it is, if I buy one, I have to give up one I already have. When this happens I feel as if I were tearing the wings off butterflies. But occasionally I go there with my sister (whom I am staying with) and nephew (who comes down, now and then, rom Seattle, to visit), and temptation strikes. On my last visit I managed to keep myself to merely four books. I thinik that’s quite reasonable.
So now I have to find a Little Library near here and deposit four books in it. But first I have to select the victims…
Was the barn Baldwin’s Book Barn in West Chester, PA? It’s still there, but devilishly hard to navigate (particularly for those of us with problems climbing stairs).
Might well have been; I remember it was near an autdoor market and auction, though that was 50 years ago, so it might not be there any more. West Chester sounds right.
And there certainly were a lot of stairs.
Oh, Baldwin’s Book Barn is still there, located just outside West Chester, PA; see https://bookbarn.com .
YES!
One look at the photos on that website, and memories came flooding back. That is indeed the place. Thank you, Evelyn and Larsaf.
I believe that Jonathan Lethem worked at Moe’s, back when he was writing Gun, With Occasional Music.
That is correct; I knew him somewhat. We were, if I recall correctly, both in a UC Extension writing class taught by Marta Randall.
Lost Books in Chiang Mai is a stable in my diet. It’s been here for ages and offers a great selection of second hand books.
In Athens, Greece, it was every second-hand bookshop I could find in Monastiraki. And there were a great many. Not anymore.
“The Merchant of Fairness” what used to be in Balwyn, and then at the South Melbourne Market, alas now gone.
And the shop with the books stacked by genre reminded me of my ex-father-out-law’s shop, “McLeod’s Books”, in Box Hill, where he’d just pile to books anywhere as they came in, no attempt to sort beyond pulling out the hard-covers that might have had a real value. Long gone before I met his daughter. :-)
The first second hand bookshop I frequented was run by the father of a school friend; we were both habitually late and it offered a dry place to meet. His primary focus was left wing political thought, but he had a science fiction section as well as the Mills &Boon ‘Library’ which covered the rent as romance paid for so much else in publishing and book retail. It was in the Covered Market in Oxford, run by Phil Gilbert and I don’t recall if it had a name, but it was a good place to wait, Phil was always interesting to listen to, I could browse the books, and if my friend was later than me Phil would make me coffee too.
I too remember the Fantasy Centre fondly in it’s Holloway Road days, I tried to stop by any time I was in London for work, which was often enough to graduate to being given coffee as I browsed. I was in there one day when China Mieville popped in for a browse and to sign the reviewers hardbacks that somehow found their way there for resale.
My first used bookstore was The Book Alcove in Rockville Md., which I only remembered by looking at the bookmark in my copy of Tevis’ The Man Who Fell to Earth that 13 year old me got there in ‘84.
My actual first bookstore was The Paperback Booksmith in Jacksonville Fla., where my father worked part time, and I spent much of my elementary school summers off. Many years later I learned of Chamblin Bookmine in Jax, an excellent, huge used bookstore.
In Colorado Springs I got hooked on used bookstores, starting with Poor Richard’s downtown, followed by Hooked on Books (the original location changed owners and is now Basecamp Books, the newer downtown HoB is still open), Then there was The Book Broker, was also downtown, was huge, but the building owner raised the rent and the store closed. Another closed shop was Books For You, the owner retired but couldn’t find a buyer to take it over. I’ve probably have gotten a couple thousand books between them. My book buying has slowed way down now, mainly because I realized I have more than I’ll ever be able to read, and news ones I want to read keep coming out.
I could go on about a used book expedition in New York, several years ago, but will just recommend The Strand.
The Paradox Bookshop next to the Center market in downtown Wheeling, WVa, is a gem.
@Paul Connelly: I second your endorsement of The Raven in Northampton, and I’m delighted that you mentioned The Toadstool in Keene, where I currently work.
Rather than singing the praises of the obvious suspects here (Uncle Hugo’s and Dreamhaven, both in Minneapolis), I’ll talk about the first used bookstore I ever visited, a little place called Books ‘n’ Things in a shopping center near my childhood home.
And what made this particular store very important to me in particular is that I discovered it (or it opened) in the very early 80s, I think, and at some point, somebody in town must’ve been clearing their shelves of old SFF paperbacks including a whole lot of Ballantine Adult Fantasy titles, including Clark Ashton Smith’s collections Hyperborea and Poseidonis, and a number of Lin Carter-edited anthologies, all of which I was buying before I knew that the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series was actually a thing.
(Knew someone would have to mention Uncle Hugo’s in Minneapolis…) True story; I went to school with Don Blyly (didn’t know him well; my BFF did), who was still one of the owners as of 2024. He once “taught a course” at the “Free University” at U of I, Urbana/Champaign called, “Science Ficntion as Mental Masturbation”.
Very happy to see that my longtime favorite, Book Barn in Niantic, CT, has already been mentioned by two people! Book Barn is a destination set of bookstores, with the original site in an actual barn and outbuildings, a delightful place to visit in good weather, picnic, say hello to the goats and the cats. I have a Canadian friend who wants us to go to Book Barn every time he visits. I have bought all sorts of novels at the Book Barn stores, including a hc of Tanya Huff’s The Wild Ways–my favorite of her books both because I’m fond of selkies and because there’s a lot of Scottish dance music going on in my family. Most often, though, I get picture books (e.g. Jane Yolen’s Tam Lin) or SFF paperbacks at Book Barn’s downtown store. Several copies of Vonda McIntyre’s Barbary, which I give to every girl I know when she reaches her tweens. An excellent gateway drug to get a girl into SF! Paperback themed collections of SFF short stories in not-great shape, which I read in the bathtub, in solidarity with Jo Walton. I did find a signed pb short story collection by Connie Willis, which I’m very happy to own and do *not* read in the bathtub!
I lived for a while in Berkeley CA and had fun browsing in Moe’s. Also have enjoyed The Strand in NYC. And a shout-out to The Country Bookshop in Plainfield, VT, another destination used bookstore!
When I moved to Atlanta in the ’90s I was all about the used bookstore Oxford Books & Comics owned by the Dickensian-named Rupert LeCraw. Unfortunately he wasn’t the best businessman and the beloved new and used Oxford bookstores all went under in the early 2000s. But they were so random and cool in the day.
“Booksy Galore” in the Scotts Corners neighborhood of Pound Ridge, New York.
30 years ago, as an impoverished college student in Mumbai (then Bombay), I often haunted the New and Second Hand Book Store in the Fort area (I recollect picking up a collected H G Wells for a pittance, on my first visit). Another of those stores with no obvious scheme of arrangement, just piles and piles of books and that heady scent of fragile old paper. The area also had a number of excellent roadside booksellers (Among other things, I picked up most of Larry Niven’s Known Space books there)
Later, while working in Bangalore (now Bengaluru) I discovered Church Street, a haven for bookstores (my favourites being Blossoms and Bookworm, both of which are not only alive but have expanded to multiple stores). I still drop in at both whenever I visit the city.
I have forgotten the names of the stores, but in the early 1970s I frequented a store on the second floor over a liquor store in Wheaton, MD. One of the ones with stacks of books and little organization.
The summer after high school I had a job in downtown Washington DC. There was a secondhand bookstore near my office that I often visited at lunch. I was reading my way through Georgette Heyer at the time, so when I finished one, I would go in and find another. I also dipped into not-Heyer regencies and began to recognize something about quality.
In the late 80s I was often in a small, overstuffed store in Tulsa near Lafortune Park.
I have also enjoyed used bookstores while traveling, especially Powell’s and one in Salt Lake City.
I come to sing the praises of the Village Bookshop, Linworth, Ohio. Sadly out of business now, it featured used and remaindered books housed in an old church building. For some reason it also had a specialty section on the Civil War. I spent many a rainy afternoon in the stacks, sipping free tea and loading up on strange titles you couldn’t find anywhere else.
May I present Bookman’s in Tucson, AZ? They have lots of used entertainment media (albums, movies, video games, musical instruments, etc.) not just books.
Also has branches, including one in Mesa that we used to hit on the way from the Phoenix airport to my mother-in-law’s place. I think that’s where I got a book in English on Lucha Libre, and another in Spanish on werewolves in the cinema.
There were several “hole’s in the wall” in my misspent youth, whose names I no longer remember, but the one I remember most fondly is one I didn’t discover until I made a job-related move in my early forty’s. It was in Denver I encountered “The Tattered Cover”, new and used bookstore. No longer live in Colorado, but I still remember that place (places? more than one location) with great fondeness!
I also went to the KW Bookstore, Now & Then for books and comics, also Second Look Books & more, & Casablanca Books which closed a few years ago?
I was a huge fan of Acres of Books in Long Beach, CA. I used to go to Acres of Books on the weekends, pick out one or two books, go to the little deli across the street for lunch. Then I would happily while away an afternoon at the beach, reading a book and watching the kites. I must have bought a thousand books there. Sadly, AoB is no longer with us, a victim of the Great Recession and the used bookstore market in general.
Cheap Thrills on Metcalf St in Montreal when I was a teenager (they also sold vinyl) – still extant though now a few blocks away; then later Dawn Treader books, with two locations, in Ann Arbor (I won’t say I picked UMich for grad school because of it, but I did locate it while visiting to decide between schools, and it was not a negative – I remember finding a copy of Till We Had Faces, which I’d been hunting for a while). In New York, most places are hit or miss at best and the better ones don’t seem to last. The Strand, though wonderful in other ways (I used to hit it up Friday nights on the way back from a bar to use the bathroom, and buy books while tipsy), is too snooty to have a reliably good SF section, though it’s big, but these days it’s mostly half-priced newish books; East Village Books can be decent but is also variable; Troubled Sleep in Brooklyn, near where I live now, isn’t bad, but small. The best days of the used book store are probably behind us, but it does look like they will probably persist for a while.
I also want to put in a word for Myopic Books, Chicago, IL.
Used books and comics were available at H&H Furniture Co. near the waterfront in Coos Bay, Oregon — there for me from an impressionable age, starting around 1967. In Ashland, Oregon, Blue Goose Books was a haunt for Ballantine Fantasy books and such, and so was the Bartlett Street Bookstore in Medford when I could get there, with some nicely priced H. Rider Haggard hardcovers. It was easy to build a decent sff library for spare change in southern Oregon, 55 years or so ago. In Portland, yeah, Powell’s was great as I branched out from sff into Russian literature, etc. Powell’s established itself as the great bookstore for me, by around 1978. Champaign-Urbana, Illinois was a bit of a disappointment though I will mention Acres of Books, and the Used Book Store in the basement of the YMCA. In Milwaukee, there was Renaissance Books downtown. That building has been torn down. Now in Fargo there’s still BDS Books (owner’s initials). Packed shelves and boxes of books on the floor — a vanishing feature of the American downtown — if you’re in the area you’d best check it out before it’s gone.
Posting from Ashland:
I don’t have a memory of the Blue Goose as such (then again, I’m only in town briefly if regularly for the OSF plays, and rarely get beyond downtown). Nowadays my most regular haunt is the Book Exchange, down the hill from Main on Water Street (which based on the shape of the collection might have inherited the Goose’s stock). There is also a particular antique and book shop that’s floated up and down Main for years, currently operating as 3 Magpies, which I didn’t get into this week but which has always had a nice selection of early collectible Oz books and regional history, among a solid antiquarian selection.
The Book Exchange was a pretty good outfit, last time I was in Ashland — nine years ago. I associate Blue Goose with the Seventies. When it ceased to be a physical bookstore, the owner, Liz Jones, continued to sell books from her home, if I’m not mistaken. Long ago and far away.
Every since I was a kid and until this day, two weeks ago in fact, I have loved the used book compound of the Book Barn in Niantic, Connecticut. I would browse every shelf, corner and building to find something that would peak my interest. They also have goats and cats around the place too.
Looks like I’m the first one to mention The Curious Book Shop in East Lansing, MI. It’s on Grand River Avenue bordering on the Michigan State University campus, and has been in business in that location since 1973!
Among my memorable finds there were the complete (at the time) Riverworld series and multiple autographed Harlan Ellison volumes, presumably from when he taught at Clarion East on campus.
in addition to a large F/SF selection, the shop carries a ton of Michigan history and non-fiction books.
The Green Hand in Portland, Maine. although it’s both new and used. The owner is a delight and knows her stuff.
I too will limit myself to three. My first love in used bookstores was DawnTreader books in Ann Arbor (the location just down the street from the State Theater and the first Barnes and Noble, and two blocks from the library). I’d park in the library lot, return last week’s books, pick up a few new ones, and walk over to DawnTreader and pursue the maze of twisty shelves in the basement where they kept the science fiction (and erotic horror, to my bemusement). It turns out they opened the year before I moved there! I remember finding Michael Moorcock’s Elric books in a corner smelling of dust and old paper and stories …
One of my most memorable experiences was visiting Toronto, walking around a corner and seeing a giant marquee for The World’s Biggest Bookstore. Entering the vast and busy space and seeing shelves that seemed to stretch on forever. I’m not sure I even bought anything – unique for me in a bookstore! – but just wandered through what seemed like endless arrays of shelves …
BookBuyers in Palo Alto then Mountain View was a haven for me for a long time. I found the first annual edition of Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Best Science Fiction there after a 10+year search. It used to be a staple of my weekends – ultimate frisbee, meet friends for brunch, hit the bookstore, play board games … Alas, they too have closed their doors.
I will also insert a plug for Powell’s and the Strand – both are iconic for a reason.
I’m old enough that I remember going to Borders when it was a single used bookstore on the main street in Ann Arbor, Michigan. (But Wooden Spoon in Ann Arbor was a better used book store for SF.) And also buying used books at the Barnes & Noble Annex across Fifth Avenue from their (only) store on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 18th Street.
Dawn Treader was after my time, I think, or maybe had a brief overlap. (We were in Michigan from mid-1974 to the end of 1977.)
Wonderful article! I have to mention Oxford Books, Oxford Too, and Oxford Comics in Atlanta, as two others have already done. I worked at one of them years ago, and still have so many books from all of them. Oxford Comics is still open! I also have to recommend a Tennessee-based store, McKay’s. The Chattanooga one is a huge building crammed with books, comics, games, and music. There’s also one in Nashville, and now two locations in North Carolina, Their store in Knoxville is, unfortunately, closed.
I could not leave the thread without mentioning another favorite:
A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, in Cupertino (they also had locations in SF and Larkspur, according to the bookmark I still use).
Bath, Maine has more used books stores in their downtown area than any place I’ve ever visited and the best one is Open Door Books.
Open Door Books is piled to the rafters and with shelves that don’t look safe.. even has old paper backs that must be getting left out in the rain because they have been seriously weathered.
I usually make it up there twice a year to take my daughter back to colledge and vist my mother. I mostly look for anything Robert E Howard, Edgar Rice Burrougs, and any pulpish mens adventure and always find something there.
The thing is though, you better be a patient hunter. Every time just as I’m about to give up, I’ll spot a gem on the way out, and then I start the hunt all over again.
I have fond memories of going to Eliot’s (and some other bookstores that seemed to have no names) on Yonge Street in Toronto after we arrived for the Toronto International Film Festival each year but before it started, and also going out to the Sleuth of Baker Street.
I might be taking note of all of these bookstores being mentioned. My husband and I plan our anniversary trips around many things but the main point is wherever we go – has to have at least one interesting looking used bookstore. Hey, you have a book/library themed wedding and then find a THREE STORY used bookstore in Niagra Falls on your honeymoon (Book Corner), you’re going to develop a predictable habit…
My favorite used bookstore around me is actually mostly used/some new/plus board and card games, Firefly Bookstore in Kutztown PA USA. Not only is it filled with wild stuff since it’s a college town but the owners and staff are the sweetest people ever.
Back in the day (the 1980s and 1990s) I maintained a collection of bookstore lists for the US, Canada, Europe, and several other places. It started as a collection from rec.arts.books, where people kept asking for bookstores in the SF Bay Area and finally I just started saving them and regularly posting them. From there, it grew, first with New York City and then, like a fungus, all over.
In 2020, I finally gave it up, because I wasn’t traveling enough to keep it updated, and what with everything available on the Net, it hardly seemed worth the effort. It had been a labor of love, but eventually became a tedium.
I was on a school trip to the Canadian side of the falls in 1974 and despite concerted searching, the only book was ADF’s Star Trek Log One. Didn’t have much better luck on my honeymoon 8 years later… didn’t think of looking for a bookstore on the US side. Oddly, the one book I bought was also an ADF, Nor Crystal Tears.
(My then wife was also a reader. This wasn’t me faffing off on my honeymoon)
I spent my eleventh birthday in Hay-on-Wye and it was absolute heaven for a book-obsessed child. I bought a copy of Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising to read for the first time and serendipitously found it turns on the main character’s own eleventh birthday. Wonderful! In later visits I particularly enjoyed the whole shop dedicated to poetry: https://poetrybookshop.co.uk/
Another very memorable visit was Barter Books, in Alnwick, Northumberland, constructed in a disused railway station: https://www.barterbooks.co.uk/html/About%20Us/The%20Bookshop.php
But most influential were the local Oxfam Books in both my home town and my university town.
Too long for a comment — I wrote about southern Oregon’s Blue Goose Books (Ashland) and the Bartlett Street Book Store (Medford) in the fanzine Fadeaway ten years ago. The piece may be read here for free:
Microsoft Word – FADEAWAY #51.doc