Travel plan idea blog

Some interesting bookstores!

A couple of weeks ago my family and I took a weekend trip to the Green Valley Book Fair in Virginia. For some reason, we are on their mailing list and every once in a while they send us an invitation – so we thought we would accept. Their website promises that it is worth the drive (from North Carolina, in our case) and I would agree – it's a huge warehouse in the middle of a farmer's field, with several rooms of new books, (500,000 books apparently) all discounted. We spent a couple of hours in there, which still wasn't enough time.

And when you are tired of browsing for books, the store is located in a beautiful part of Virginia – plenty of antique shops, caverns and wineries, as well as the scenery. Here are some other bookstores that are worth a detour –

Baldwin's Book Barn, West Chester, PA

As the name suggests, this is a huge barn (dating from 1822) full of used books and prints. The Book Barn is situated in the beautiful Brandywine Valley, within easy reach of Philadelphia. Its how a used bookstore should be – slightly chaotic, and with old books stored in seemingly every nook and cranny of the place.

Powell's City of Books, Portland, Oregon

Powell's describes itself as the world's largest independent bookstore, occupying an entire city block. The store is something of a tourist attraction and is so large that they give you a free map of the store when you enter (apparently, more than 100,000 are used in a typical year) If you find yourself changing planes at PDX, Powell's has a smaller branch there.

Shakespeare and Co., Paris

This English language bookshop in the center of Paris is something of an institution, having been the haunt of such literary giants as Henry Miller, Anais Nin and Alan Ginsberg during its history.
Today, Shakespeare and Co. is as much a meeting place and a place for poetry readings, as it is a bookstore.

Strand Bookstore, New York, NY

The Strand boasts over 2.5 million books and dates back to 1927. It's still a family owned and run business – a refreshing change in this age of chain bookstores. The Strand offers the largest selection of rare books anywhere in New York.

Hay-on-Wye

But for more bookstores per square mile than anywhere else, take a trip to Hay-on-Wye, the tiny town on the border of England and Wales that boasts over 30 secondhand bookstores. If you really want to, you can even pay to become a citizen of Hay!

Guest entry by Mancunian

Posted by James Trotta at March 25, 2008 3:16 AM | TrackBack