Originally posted by ad hoc
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Our favourite book shops
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Originally posted by delicatemoth View PostGay's The Word. Not just a great bookshop but a community asset that hosts groups etc.
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Green Apple in San Francisco is still very good, but their unbelievable baseball books section has taken a massive hit as the annex (which held all the fiction, plays, music, periodicals, etc) closed and moved into the main building and the original owner sold the bookshop to his employees. Quite obvious none of the employees likes baseball that much, as other sections lie untouched with baseball reduced down to about a third of a bookcase.
I went to Sportspages once in 2003 (which must have been right before it began to decline, as John Gaustad quit that year) and remember a disturbingly large amount of my visit. It simply blew my mind -- I was there for rugby, cricket and football books, but the baseball section was as good as anywhere I'd seen in the States -- and I was gutted it closed.Last edited by Flynnie; 07-06-2022, 14:11.
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Sadly all of my favorite bookstores are now gone:
Acres of Books in Long Beach, a warehouse-sized used book store that my dad would take me to. We'd divide up inside, and it took ages for us to find each other again.
Midnight Special Bookstore on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica, a leftist bookstore on the biggest tourist attractions in LA. They easily had the best international history section in any store that I've been in.
Dutton's in Brentwood in Los Angeles. A nice neighborhood bookstore in a lovely mid-century modern commercial building.
Still, LA does have some great bookstores. Book Soup on the Sunset Strip (I worked for their other location in the ridiculous South Coast Plaza mall in Costa Mesa in grad school), Skylight Books in Los Feliz (it has a tree growing inside the bookstore in the middle. I went to a David Foster Wallace reading there once in college and we talked a little bit about Don DeLillo afterwards), and the Last Bookstore in Downtown, the most photographed bookstore on Instagram, but which is actually a great shop as well as just having a cool design with book sculptures.
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Another fan of Daunt's and Stanford's though the latter is slightly diminished by its new location in London. I also love the big Ludwig on Leipzig Hauptbahnhof. Everything you could ever want on German (and beyond) railways in particular but also loads on travel, local stuff and maps.
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John Smith's by Hillhead Subway station in Glasgow, now a fuckin subway sangwich thing. Stephen Pastel sold me the White Album in the record shop upstairs, also a Stereolab singles comp that I've had to buy at least once more since due to thieving basterds.
Chapters was good in Dublin till they moved to the way too big Parnell St premises. Books Upstairs manages to be both charming and slightly sad. Always had the LRB in.
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Foyles Charing Cross Road was a haphazard maze of book shelves in no recognised order of author or subject. And a tea trolley would be wheeled around.
But yea Sportspages was something else. Even after left London would have a contact there who organised delivery of a package of fanzines every 6 weeks or so.
Back Page Newcastle
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By the way, this is a bookshop in the making being crowdfunded by former Private Eye illustrator Dave Ziggy Greene. Worthy of support if you can spare a fiver or more.
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Originally posted by Sunderporinostesta View PostThe old church in Inverness that’s been converted into a used book shop.
The used book shop on Oxford Road/Street(?) Sydney, just opposite and along from The Art Hotel.
Sportsbooks RIP
Murder One RIP
Durham Book Centre RIP
Any Oxfam Book Shop
Notting Hill M&V Exchange Book Shop RIP*
When did it close? I was over there a couple of weeks back for the first time since before lockdown and it’s gone.
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Originally posted by Incandenza View Postthe Last Bookstore in Downtown, the most photographed bookstore on Instagram, but which is actually a great shop as well as just having a cool design with book sculptures.
Second the Strand. I have shelves full from there.
Baltimore has a decent smaller one called the Ivy.
RIP Aardvark Books in San Francisco. There is/was a decent one in Haight-Ashbury of which I forget the name, close to the Rasputin Records, if that's still there. There's a sci-fi bookstore on Valencia in the Mission District, and a small but good one on a corner of Valencia too, maybe Valencia and 19th or so, as of when I was last there pre-plague.
Philly has 2 connected by 2nd Street. The Book Trader, on 2nd just above Market, then walk south on 2nd thru the oddness of Society Hill to Head House books.
Lighthouse Books in Monterey is also good.
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Aardvark was great. I visited it right before it closed. They wanted to sell to somebody who would keep it alive as a bookstore but they just couldn't find anybody. Then the yoga studio that replaced it closed within a few months, so it's just an empty storefront with the Aardvark Books neon sign above it. I was glad to see that -- some asshat covered the Star Bakery sign in Noe Valley.
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City Lights in San Francisco is a beautiful place.
Notting Hill M&V Book Shop is indeed still there, but I think it's lost a little bit of its edge and vitality now. It tends to have just one person on the counter, which can't be a whole lot of fun for the staff. That place used to be the ideas factory. They had a special tape, designed to be as annoying as possible, which they used to play to get customers out of the shop at 8pm. It was the introduction to "Strawberry Fields Forever", but continually looping back to the start before the drop into the first line.
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Originally posted by imp View PostBy the way, this is a bookshop in the making being crowdfunded by former Private Eye illustrator Dave Ziggy Greene. Worthy of support if you can spare a fiver or more.
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If you're ever passing through Tralee, the best bookshop here is on behalf of the charity Action Lesotho - in a nondescript arcade marked "Tralee Shopping Centre", but a good mixture of history, classics, crime and literary fiction, and all reasonably priced.
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