Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Beyond Words - Northampton, MA
  

    
Alas, mine closed. It was Burlington Books on Madison Ave and 83rd.
ITs been replaced by another, but its spiffier and newer and I liked
the mess and the mustiness of the old store. 
  

    

There are some nice little bookstores up in the Carnegie Hill area,
aren't there?
  

    

Locally, I love: City Lights and A Clean Well-Lighted Place in SF; Cody's
and Diesel in the East Bay.

In other cities: Gotham Book Mart, Strand and St. Marks Books in NYC; Book
Soup in L.A.

But Powell's in Portland is still, hands down, the greatest bookstore I've
ever seen.
  

    

Myopic Books in Providence, RI. A great used bookstore.
There's always something you want to buy.
  

    
In Seattle:

Elliott Bay Books
Seattle Book Center
Wit's End

In Vancouver:

Duthie's
  

    
Boston has such a wealth of really, really good bookstores. My
favorite new books place is probably Newton's "Mobile Book Fair", which
is just an amazing warehouse of books books books and great staff.
Since Powell's in Portland, OR is inconvenient, I've recycled a lot of
money at McIntyre & Moore in Davis Square (although I liked the former
Harvard Square store better), the used book place whose name I can
never remember at Beacon & St. Mary's in Boston, the Victor Hugo on
Newbury St. for perfect browsing, and the Harvard Bookstore in Harvard
Square for a nice compromise between the best of new and used books.
  

    
you have just described a common weekend itinerary for me.
  

    
Philadelphia has a couple of good ones, though my favorites are
Robbins Bookstore, on 13th Street, which has one of the most
comprehensive poetry collections I've come across (and weekly, at
least, readings), and, for the mystical explorer in me, Garland of
Letters, on South Street, which is one of the very best in that genre,
anywhere.
  

    
While in Philadelphia, meander out to Mount Airy and check out Walk a
Crooked Mile books, in the Mount Airy train station.
  

    
My favorite is gone .. it was the Either/Or Bookstore in Hermosa Beach
.. a bunch of tiny stores knocked together, climbing up the hill a
block from the beach ..  
  

    

When did it go??
  

    
not sure, I'm living in Northern California now .. I just got word
from a friend that it was gone ... I wasn't there to watch.

I used to live less than a block away, and at 10 or 10:30 at night,
getting settled in and realizing I didn't have anything to read, I
could pull on a sweater and walk to the corner and browse for a book.
Ahhh ... what a life.
  

    

I used to live not too far from there, too.  What a shame.  I always loved
the name!
  

    
tattered cover in denver and the imposing strand of course
sorry i'm to lazy to read back to see that these had already been discussed
o and codys and chapel hill rare books...
  

    
I have two new favorites - one is Just books in Greenwich Ct.
(Justbooks.org on line). Only 800 sq ft. but the people who run the
store are so knowledgable. And readerville.com - an online bookstore
that has the feel of a bricks and mortar indy.
  

    
Mind if I pop in? Reading this topic made me remember my all-time
favorite book shop - The Canterbury Cafe in Madison, Wisconsin. There
was always a jazz trio, the world's best soup, and overly-long games of
Scrabble. I never went in to get a specific book, but every time I
visited, I came out with an armful of them and lunch to boot.