44 Great American Bookstores Every Book Lover Must Visit

Author: Jennifer Schaffer (BuzzFeed) · Published: October 22, 2014 · URL: https://www.buzzfeed.com/jenniferschaffer/great-american-bookstores

One-line: A coast-to-coast BuzzFeed list of 44 independent bookstores, pitched as “fighting the good fight for the American bibliophile” — and, read as a set, a catalogue of the different ways an indie bookstore earns its keep.

Summary

The list is the content. Each entry is a photo and a short paragraph, and the paragraphs keep landing on the same few reasons a store survives. Some are about sheer scale or collection: John K. King in Detroit turned a former glove factory into a home for “over a million books, organized into 900 categories”; Powell’s is called “the largest independent used bookstore in the world”; The Brattle in Boston holds more than 200,000. Some are about specialisation: Heirloom in Charleston sells vintage and rare cookbooks, The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale is devoted to mysteries, Grolier in Cambridge is poetry, South Congress Books in Austin is rare and out-of-print.

A larger share are about the store as a gathering place rather than a shop: readings and events (Politics & Prose’s speaker lineup, Skylight’s “multiple readings a week,” Rediscovered Books’ “Book & Booze Night”), a café attached (Prairie Lights, McNally Jackson, Elliott Bay, Housing Works), or a co-op role in a local creative scene (Guide to Kulchur calls itself an “incubator for emerging and marginalized voices within the print medium”). A few are propped up by a famous owner or a cause: Garrison Keillor owns Common Good Books; Ann Patchett co-founded Parnassus with publisher Karen Hayes “after the last indie bookshop in Nashville closed”; Housing Works’ profits go to fighting homelessness and AIDS. Tattered Cover in Denver even had an Espresso Book Machine for printing a book on demand. The list closes by asking readers to nominate their own favourites.

The 44 stores

1. Prairie Lights Bookstore — Iowa City, Iowa
2. Guide to Kulchur — Cleveland, Ohio
3. John K. King Used and Rare Books — Detroit, Michigan
4. Myopic Books — Chicago, Illinois
5. Magers & Quinn — Minneapolis, Minnesota
6. Full Circle Bookstore — Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
7. Common Good Books — St. Paul, Minnesota
8. Square Books — Oxford, Mississippi
9. Bound To Be Read Books — Atlanta, Georgia
10. Maple Street Books — New Orleans, Louisiana
11. Parnassus Books — Nashville, Tennessee
12. Heirloom Bookshop — Charleston, South Carolina
13. Books & Books — Coral Gables, Florida
14. Faulkner House Books — New Orleans, Louisiana
15. South Congress Books — Austin, Texas
16. Dog Eared Books — San Francisco, California
17. The Last Bookstore — Los Angeles, California
18. The Booksmith — San Francisco, California
19. Skylight Books — Los Angeles, California
20. Henry Miller Memorial Library — Big Sur, California
21. The Toadstool Bookshop — Peterborough, New Hampshire
22. Brattle Book Shop — Boston, Massachusetts
23. Symposium Books — Providence, Rhode Island
24. Politics & Prose — Washington, D.C.
25. Grolier Poetry Book Shop — Boston (Cambridge), Massachusetts
26. Baldwin’s Book Barn — West Chester, Pennsylvania
27. Longfellow Books — Portland, Maine
28. Atomic Books — Baltimore, Maryland
29. RiverRun Books — Portsmouth, New Hampshire
30. Three Lives & Co. — Manhattan, New York
31. powerHouse — DUMBO, Brooklyn, New York
32. The Bookery — Ithaca, New York
33. McNally Jackson — Manhattan, New York
34. Housing Works Bookstore — Manhattan, New York
35. Powell’s — Portland, Oregon
36. Elliott Bay Book Company — Seattle, Washington
37. Shakespeare & Co. — Missoula, Montana
38. Rediscovered Books — Boise, Idaho
39. Eclipse Bookstore — Bellingham, Washington
40. The King’s English Bookshop — Salt Lake City, Utah
41. The Poisoned Pen — Scottsdale, Arizona
42. Bookworks — Albuquerque, New Mexico
43. Red Letter Secondhand Books — Boulder, Colorado
44. Tattered Cover Bookstore — Denver, Colorado

Full text

Archived privately against link rot: ../attachments/44-great-american-bookstores-every-book-lover-must-visit/44-great-american-bookstores-every-book-lover-must-visit.md (every entry’s description and photo credit, plus the lead image).

Connections

• Bookstore Economics — the list is an informal field survey of how independent stores stay open: scale, specialisation, events and cafés, a celebrity owner, or a cause.
• My Bookstore — the anthology version of the same idea, with 84 writers each profiling a favourite independent store; Dog Eared Books, where Kyle picked it up, is on this list too.
• Dog Eared Books — #16 on the list, in San Francisco’s Mission District.
• Powell’s — #35, billed as “the largest independent used bookstore in the world.”
• Republic of Letters — the bookstore as a physical meeting place for readers and writers, which is what most of these entries are really praising.