Good Book Towns and Rotten Ones

Extollager

Extollager

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 21, 2010
Messages
9,046
Victoria Silverwolf wrote, "We had some time to kill so we went to the one halfway decent used book store in the Chattanooga area."

Here's a thread for you to praise great villages, towns, cities as places to find used books, and also to grouse about municipalities that ought to be ashamed of themselves for the paltriness of their bookstores.

I'll continue the discussion by praising Portland, Oregon, at least as it was around 1980. There was not only Powell's great store but good sources. I used to rise the 'hound from Seaside, where I was a secondary school teacher, to Portland about once a month and fill a backpack with books. (Yes, I did pay for them.) I know Powell's is still there -- in fact has several stores in the Portland area.
 
Madison, Wisconsin was a fine book store town when we were there some years ago. New, used, and special interest (feminist. etc.) They were all located within walking distance of each other, too. Also a good city for a variety of restaurants and other urban tourist attractions. Nifty farmer's market stretching around the huge state capitol building, too; one mile of stuff for sale.
 
Hay-on-Wye

Honorable mentions for Vancouver (Pulp Fiction on West 10th especially), Toronto (lots of good used book stores when I visited 10 years or so ago) and Melbourne, in particular Brunswick St. which had a great selection of interesting bookshops when I lived there around the millenium.
 
Portlandia. Great town for many reasons. But Powell's Books is reason enough to visit all by itself. We won't mention Grimm. Oops. Too late.:D
 
Grimm, Clovis-Man? To me that's one or the other of a couple of brothers... but I think you mean something/someone else...

Hitmouse, the fame of Hay-on-Wye has reached even Vanishing Rural America. So lots of books at attractive prices?
 
Alnwick in Notherbumland, great second hand bookstore. Also, the Gatehouse of Fleet in Dumfries and Wigtown (though I have yet to get there.) belfast used to be good but losing the quirky Easons in Ann Street and the unreplaceable (though the new uni bookstore is good) Bookshop at Queens, bastion of good sense throughout the Troubles, made it depressingly generic now.
 
[QUOTE="Hitmouse, the fame of Hay-on-Wye has reached even Vanishing Rural America. So lots of books at attractive prices?[/QUOTE]
Hay-on-Wye... When I was still living in France, some 20 odd years ago, I saw a documentary about the place. And then a few months after I moved to England, we went there, with my future husband. And then throughout the years regularly, when we could afford it. In Richard Booth's bookshop, I remember spending nearly an hour on a rainy sunday afternoon browsing their SF section, which could have been a smaller bookshop itself. Complete and utter bliss discovering some Tanith Lee's books I didn't have or even knew! Second to this, The Cinema Bookshop. Rows and rows of shelves of books of any sort (even in Welsh language). I even found some wildlife book from 1969 in French for a fiver, which I promplty bought. The year after, I found the second part for the same price. Alas, I had to fork out nearly £30 for the third in the series on a French site called Price Minister. That just make me think I'm overdue for a trip to Wales. It is only a few hours drive from the South of England. If you are from oversea and plan to have a look at good old Great Britain, you must go to Hay-on-Wye and to boot, it is a very pretty village, with a great countryside around.
 
For the Rotten ones... Newbury in Berkshire until 2008, had a great second hand bookshop tucked away in a small street, off the may strip. Unfortunately, it shut down and there is only the Oxfam charity shop which sells books a bit better than run-of-the mill bestsellers. The SF section is a bit small, but with a bit of luck, I find sometimes something worth buying.
 
@Extollager re:Hay. Yes lots of books at attractive prices. In fact the whole town is essentially a giant co-operative used bookshop. There are days worth of browsing and the depth of the collections is amazing. Having said that,they are professionals who know what they are selling, so stupid bargains are unusual. Plus there is a very good annual lit festival there. Plus Hay is located in one of the most beautiful places in the world.
 
What I'd want to see would be a teleplay in which someone finds the way to the secret he or she needs to discover, by going to Powell's Bookstore and exploring the shelves -- with lots of on-site photography.
 
I have here scans of a 1979 Oregonian newspaper article about Powell's Books. This was within a few years of the opening of the store. Walter Powell had been inspired to start a store by his son, Michael, who ran a bookstore in Chicago (as I recall). powells 1.jpeg powells 2.jpeg

PS Take note of what other category of books he says sells well. ;)
 
There was an old used bookshop on an out of the way street in Coventry alas no longer there.
It had a pretty good SF selection.
When I first went in they had four shelves of magazines, Galaxy, If, Analog, F&SF ect.
I bought the lot!!!
 
Toronto is great for huge boxes of freebies. There's not much anglaise schprechting left here, so I routinely find hundreds of hardcovers, PBs, you-name-it. Thrown out. Meanwhile the thrift stores are overstocked, literally, every S. King book, LOTR, multiple copies everywhere. Never seen anything like it. All the real bookdealers are online or they are out of business. I used to be a book scout, now I don't even bother trying cos' they won't buy anything anymore. There's two bags of Analogs sitting up the street here, and I can't fit them into my room so FeH! I really used to enjoy scouting books, but beer bottles are now much more profitable.
 
I wonder if what J Riff describes isn't a sign of what will become more common in the future.... the discarding of books, of the major portions of libraries. That has already been happening or is well on its way as regards the periodicals holdings of the libraries, as discussed in Baker's Double Fold.

I own perhaps 2000+ books, and expect that, when I have departed this life (I am 60), no one will want more than a comparative handful of my books -- if I haven't disposed of most of them already.
 
REF: Extollager.
Thanks for your comment but to be honest the shelves weren't that long.
But they made a good start to my magazine collection.
Got a load of books from there as well, just kept on coming back!!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread starter Similar threads Forum Replies Date
F (Found) Sci-Fi book about made up son Book Search 2
Astro Pen The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories Book Discussion 5
Jo Zebedee merlin book Book Search 10
Astro Pen AMSR for book people Book Discussion 0
M Time travel books and themes Book Discussion 23

Similar threads


Back
Top