Bookstores I Have Known

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My town’s Montclair Book Center, August 19, 2023. (Photo by me.)

Last week, I discussed some libraries in my life. This week, I’m following that up by focusing on some bookstores in said life.

I’ll start with my New Jersey town of Montclair, which has two independent bookstores — unusual for a suburb of about 40,000 people.

One of those retailers is Montclair Book Center, which opened in 1984 (thanks, George Orwell 🙂 ) but appealingly feels much older. Rather scruffy-looking, but filled with a ton of new and used titles in its crowded aisles. I can’t count the number of book (and calendar) gifts I’ve purchased there over the years.

The second Montclair literary haven is the less quirky but quite nice Watchung Booksellers, a mere five-minute walk from my apartment.

In nearby New York City, where I lived and worked for many years, perhaps the most memorable bookstore is the renowned Strand — which has 2.5 million new, used, rare, and out-of-print books. Formerly also very convenient, given that the Manhattan-based magazine for which I used to write was only two blocks down Broadway in the East Village.

Among my memories of shopping at the Strand, from when I was in my mid-20s, was surprising a woman I was dating at the time with a present of a very hard-to-find book she said she’d been seeking for years. The Strand had it in stock during those pre-Amazon days. But the woman was rather blasé about the gift, and we didn’t date much longer. 🙂

Further afield in the United States, I have fond memories of visiting famous bookstores such as City Lights in San Francisco and Powell’s in Portland, Oregon. And a not-so-famous one in Tennessee whose name I can’t remember — but I recall several other things about that 1991 experience.

I was in Memphis to cover the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists convention for a magazine when a free afternoon allowed me to walk around the city with Jerry Robinson, whose many accomplishments in cartooning included creating the iconic character of The Joker (and naming sidekick Robin) while working on the Batman comic books as a pre-World War II teen. Anyway, we found a great shop with comic books and other cartoon items — and Jerry, who was 69 at the time, was like a kid in a candy store. Needless to say, he made several purchases.

While I prefer independent bookstores to chain ones (especially indies with cats 🙂 ), I’ve certainly frequented some nice Barnes & Noble outlets. The now-defunct Borders, too; I even visited its flagship store in Ann Arbor with my wife Laurel — who spent the majority of her childhood in that Michigan city.

Airport bookstores? Usually pretty basic, but they’ve come in handy at times.

After flying to Paris, one has to at least browse the many outdoor book kiosks near the Seine — as I’ve done several times. And I found a bookstore in Moscow many years ago that featured some English-language offerings among its Russian-language titles. I still have Nikolai Ostrovsky’s novel How the Steel Was Tempered from that visit.

Bookstores you have known?

My literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column for Baristanet.com every Thursday. The latest piece — about an “emergency” meeting that wasn’t an emergency, and more — is here.

83 thoughts on “Bookstores I Have Known”

  1. Bookstores and libraries are my favourite places. Visiting Shakespeare and Company in Paris was a real treat for me. (I bought a copy of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises) I stumbled upon a wonderful used bookstore on the Isle of Wight where I found a book I had been seeking for years. Munro’s Books in Victoria, British Columbia is another favourite (previously owned by Alice Munro and her former husband). I am hoping that Heaven is some sort of bookstore.

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    • Thank you, Darlene! Loved your comment! Libraries and bookstores are indeed special places, and you mentioned three memorable examples of the latter. I didn’t realize Alice Munro had owned a bookstore! Ann Patchett and Louise Erdrich have been bookstore owners as well. 🙂

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  3. My grandfather opened the Unicorn Bookstore in Chapel Hill NC in the early 1950’s, but like the mythical animal from which it got its name, was shortly after to exist only in the fantasies of mankind. My father claimed to have been in the trade in NYC a couple of years after the Second World War, but upon closer inquiry, it seems more the case that he mostly bought, and rarely sold. My earliest memory of the inside of a bookstore derives from Raleigh NC, and the used bookstore to which my aforementioned father would take me, straining to keep up as we walked, when he was after another paper bag of military history or prison escape books– the quarter-apiece Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys he got at my strident request, a sort of cover for his own acquisitions.

    But my favorite book-buying/reading/hang-out spot was the Mills Bookstore in Hillsboro Village, Nashville TN, where I had the good fortune to meet and be befriended by Mrs. Edmunds, who worked there literally till she died– went home on a Friday and died Sunday, without any notion her end was near till its was upon her. The store was in easy enough walking distance from home, so I was there a few times a week beginning age fourteen. Took a shine to me, recommended reading material, listened, made me feel like I mattered at a time I needed to know it. It was her sudden date with mortality that I regret, for many reasons, but chief among them is I never had opportunity to be properly grateful for her kind attention.

    Living nowadays near Columbia U, I am close to a few bookstores, though fewer than a decade ago, and fewer still than the number around twenty years ago. I visit the Book Culture @112th St most frequently, mostly for new paperbacks put out by the New York Review of Books, but otherwise, as readers of my prior comments on site surely must be weary of reading, I buy most of what I read– plen air– off card tables and blankets spread along Broadway near home.

    It’s a sort of beachcomber approach to buying books. You never know just what will turn up!

    Two days ago, I happened on my English poetry professor’s tome of Claire Claremont’s letters, marked ‘rare’. And indeed it must be. Despite being published (and by Harvard U press, no less) only a year before I arrived at school, it was the first time in my longish life I’d ever seen it.

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    • Thank you, jhNY! Great memories of, and thoughts about, your experience with book retailers — past and present! Wonderful that your grandfather opened a bookstore, even if it wasn’t as successful as he would have liked, and that your reader father would get you books as he got his. Also, very poignant recollections of admirable bookstore person Mrs. Edmunds, who meant so much to you in Nashville. Many of us needed someone like that in our young lives.

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  4. Hi Dave, a most enjoyable post. I have mentioned before that South Africans are not a nation of readers. The stats say only 40,000 South Africans purchase new books. That being said, we do have small bookshops here that are nice to visit. There is one in our local shopping centre that carries vintage books and I enjoy poking around there and have bought a number of books. I’ve also picked up books that other people no longer want but which are titles I value as part of South African heritage. When I visited Auckland, NZL in 2016, I was most impressed by all the bookstores especially around the quay. You could buy books for your journeys to and from work/home. I bought a nice copy of Shirley by Charlette Bronte there which I hadn’t been able to find locally.

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  5. My favourite bookstore is in ‘The House of Books’ in Barrydale, West Cape, South Africa. It is a tiny village in a backwater place, but it is splendid. It is very large and old. It has new and second-hand books, some of which are rare and expensive. If anyone gets the chance it is wonderful. I still have a little stash to read when I get the chance.

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  6. Hi Dave,

    I have a week off work at the end of September. With one of my days off, I’m travelling south for an hour so to have some lunch and visit a shop called The Really Good Bookshop. I’ve not been there before, so I don’t know if it is Really Good, but apparently they have a LOT of books, and no organisation so there will be hours of just wandering through stacks and stacks of books. Sounds much better than being at work!

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    • Thank you, Susan! That bookstore visit sounds like something to very much look forward to, and I hope it lives up to its name. 🙂 An unorganized bookstore is VERY appealing when one is open to literature-related surprises!

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  7. A real favorite of mine was Westbury Square book store in Houston in the 70s. It was one of many stores located in a city square which was designed to give one the feel of being in an old English village. There was a candlemaker shop, glassblower shop, etc. The bookstore was really small and quaint, without much of a selection, bought some book plates, no books. Then a friend of mine, who was into astrology, and I visited an occult bookstore in Houston same circa, that was downstairs in a wonderful house owned by 2 little old ladies. They were very sweet though I must say a wee bit spooky so again I didn’t buy any books. My experience with any bookstores after this proved way too dull. Westbury Square is no more, no blown glass or hand dipped candles, but I’m sure there are some witchy sisters somewhere perhaps running a burger stand, so I’m gonna make a hard pass on the secret sauce, yikes! Great post Dave, thanks Susi.

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  8. It seems a lot of bookstores have yielded to the pressure of Amazon, I must admit I’m guilty of helping the trend. When I found I could order any book I wanted and have it in my mailbox in two days, I was in reader’s heaven. It is sort of sad not to be able to browse and find something that looks interesting. I never could go in a bookstore and come out empty handed.

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    • Thank you, Sheila! I understand — I’ve succumbed to online ordering of novels once in a while, though I usually stick with borrowing from libraries and the occasional brick-and-mortar-bookstore purchase. And, yes, it’s hard to browse in a bookstore and leave empty-handed. 🙂

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  9. Thank you Dave for remembering us bookstores. Some years ago I had the opportunity to visit a beautiful bookstore at Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is named Ateneo (I think it is still open). One can find it at La Recoleta neighborhood and of course in google searching Ateneo Grand Splendid.

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  10. My main bookstore, now gone, was called “The World’s Biggest Bookstore”.
    Not a chain, and predating chains, it was massive. Three floors, as far as the eye could see on every floor, filled with books.
    There was a healthy comic books section with out of date paper dolls and kids activity books of all kinds.
    They had been there for decades when I discovered it.
    Downstairs they had, among other books, a huge Coffee Table Book area that was always fantastic for Christmas shopping. The main floor also had the current novels, best sellers, favourite authors.

    The coolest thing was that they never tossed books in order to stay up to date. In any section, fiction, non fiction, biographies, politics, geography, authors, classics, photography, atlases, mythology, etc., one could find old, out of print books that were brand new.
    In regards to fabrics, we refer to it as NOS.
    New Old Stock.
    Best, the price was the price. It never changed from the day it came to the store.
    Even NOS books did not go up in price when collectable.

    There’s more stores, but this one the one I would get lost in on a regular basis.

    Oh, a cool note, there is the West End Comics, at the corner of my block. Buy, sell, trade, comic figures, toys, games, knick knacks and what not.
    It has survived just over a decade now.

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    • Thank you, Resa!

      Wow, wow, wow — “The World’s Biggest Bookstore” in Toronto sounds absolutely incredible! And so well described by you. If it were still around, your comment would be an amazing advertisement for it. 🙂

      I see online that the store operated from 1980 to 2014. I was in Toronto a couple of times during that period; I wonder if I passed it, or even went inside. I hope so.

      An independent bookstore larger than most chain bookstores — impressive!

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      • 1980… wow. I thought it was older than that. With all the NOS books they had, they must have got them somewhere?

        Well, it was on Elm, I believe, just south of Yonge St. It was several blocks from the Eaton Centre. You must have gone there? It was just finished at the time, and our biggest shopping/entertainment centre.
        Yonge Street was still cool at that point. It had brick streets … cobble stone?
        There were lots of seedy strip joints, and live rock and roll places, and pin ball arcades.
        The “Gasworks” . a heavy rock club was featured in the movie “Wayne’s World”.
        As a matter of fact “Rush” played their first bar gig there.

        “A breakthrough came with the reduction of the legal drinking age from 21 to 18, opening up many venues to Rush. Their first bar gig was in the Toronto club Gasworks, and the show came off pretty well considering they were petrified. However, Daniels continued to have a tough time booking gigs for them”

        I know that’s all in the past, and they REALLY FIXED UP Yonge Street.
        I suppose it needed it, to a point, but they also fixed a bunch of things and atmosphere that wasn’t broken.

        Okay, so “Rush”. I forgot that I had done some costumes for them. It was not on them, but on teens/characters/scenes that were to play on the jumbo rear projection screen for their live concerts.

        I thought of you, so went to look for it and found it. It’s on VHS tape.
        The label reads:
        “Rush Warpaint
        Effect Sequences
        Screening Copy
        March 3, 1990”

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        • Well, online facts are not always reliable, but it’s certainly possible that the bookstore stocked a bunch of older editions when it opened. 🙂

          I was in Toronto covering conferences in 1989 (a National Cartoonists Society meeting hosted by “For Better or For Worse” comic creator Lynn Johnston) and 2001 (editorial cartoonists) and definitely walked around the city a lot — including “downtown.” Later gentrification — ugh. In my town, too.

          (I was in Toronto two more times after 2001 to visit relatives; one of my wife Laurel’s sisters lives there.)

          Great that you have a Rush connection, and thanks for that info on the band! Rush definitely had Toronto roots, and I gather Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson still live in the area. The late Neil Peart eventually moved to Santa Monica. He of course wrote a number of books — which I imagine The World’s Biggest Bookstore stocked. 🙂

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          • So interesting that Neil wrote.
            Have you read any of his books?
            I believe he wrote non-fiction, but co-wrote several fiction novels.
            I’m sure The World’s Biggest Bookstore stocked his books. 🙂

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            • Yes, mostly nonfiction, I think — including stuff about his wide-ranging travels. I haven’t read any of Neil Peart’s books, but have seen excerpts online — and read some of his blog posts. He was an excellent writer, and lyricist.

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  11. Dave, it is pretty amazing that you have two independent bookstores! And your post brought back such great memories of the Paris book kiosks. :-). Last time I was in Paris I planned to pick something up at the Seine-side kiosks, but found an English language bookstore (I sheepishly admit it was a chain, a UK-based chain) and wanted to buy the whole place out! I have good memories of that bookstore. 🙂

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    • Thank you, Donna! When I moved to Montclair, the independent bookstores were one of the things that impressed me about the town. 🙂 There was actually also a third one — called The Book Corner — that unfortunately closed not long after I moved.

      Even if a chain, a UK chain might feel kind of exotic for people not from the UK. 🙂 And, those kiosks near the Seine you mentioned feel as emblematic of Paris as the Eiffel Tower, the Arch of Triumph, the Louvre, Notre Dame, etc.

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  12. Hi Dave.
    When I first lived in Sandusky, Ohio, there were no fewer than three independent (fiercely so) used bookstores within a block or two of downtown. Dusty, musty spaces they were, but always with a promise of a pleasant surprise tucked far back of a shelf, if you had the patience to look. They ended with their owners. A few years later, someone tried to start a big used bookshop right downtown, and a grand place it was, but the owner became too involved in the, um, intensely personal local politics to actually run the place.
    Before that, my student days in Growling Spleen, Ohio, were enhanced by a bookstore run by a former grad student who decided to stick around. There were shelves, I’m sure, and organization, but it was not unusual to ask the owner (generally found reclining in a rickety chair, his feet propped on a pile of paperbacks) if this or that tome was available. He’d point at a pile or, if near enough, reach back and pull out, Jenga-like before there was Jenga, exactly what you were looking for or maybe something even better. That shop, too, ended with its owner.
    There was, in Grand Rapids, Ohio, a charming little bookshop not too far from the stick that showed visitors how high the water got when the Maumee River escaped its banks and flooded downtown. It had an attractive-enough array of topics and a cat that would give you an aggrieved look and stalk off, tail held high, if you dared to sit in its chair.
    I was always fond of the late, lamented Village Bookshop in Dublin, Ohio, housed in a former clapboard church, which gave pride of place to its military history section (complete with its own reading couches) but drew me in with the upstairs room completely given over to old issues of National Geographic, from the days when that magazine actually gave you words to read along with the pictures. (I recently found one of my old supplemental maps which contained more words than an entire present-day issue.)
    Local library book sales will often yield a gem among the donated bodice-ripper romances, and are not to be discounted, if only to support your local library.
    But no mention of Ohio bookstores is complete without The Book Loft of Columbus’s German Village, a delightfully bewildering maze of rooms and roomlets formed by intersecting shelves, so confusing that the first thing you must do upon entering is to pick up a copy of the bookstore map. If the weather’s at all good enough, the sales spill out into the leaf-canopied alley that leads to the main entrance. And since I was introduced to the Loft in 2000 by friend and fellow cartoonist Mike Gillett, whom you may know, the Loft has had at least two official bookstore cats.

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    • Thank you, Don! What a fantastic bunch of descriptions of various bookstores you have known!

      That almost-magical owner in the rickety chair during your student days. 🙂 The annoyed, territorial Grand Rapids cat. 🙂

      We have friends who live in Columbus’ German Village, and next time we visit them The Book Loft will be a must-see.

      It’s a shame when an independent bookstore ends when its founding owner is no longer involved, but I guess that’s the potential downside of the “originality upside” the owner brought to the store. Sometimes a successful ownership change fortunately does happen, as was the case with the Montclair Book Center in my town.

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        • I forgot …he wasn’t at the NCS convention in San Antonio where you and I met in the Hyatt elevator.
          Mike’s a good guy. We’ve been friends for 35 years, ever since he called the Register to see if we needed a cartoonist and Rex the Editor said, ‘Don, you oughta give this guy a call.” In fact, Mike just stopped by the house yesterday on his way home from a Jethro Tull concert.

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          • He does sound like a good (and talented) guy! With good taste in music. 🙂 That San Antonio Reuben Weekend was 1999, wasn’t it? If I’m remembering right, that was the last hurrah (or one of the last hurrahs) for Charles M. Schulz, Bill Mauldin, and Jeff MacNelly, who all had or would soon have major health issues. 😦

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            • It was indeed! Bill Mauldin’s room was only a couple doors from mine. He signed my copy of “Back Home.”
              I also remember how Schulz tried to draw a clearly-disoriented Mauldin out during his one-man panel, and how Jeanie fussed over him while trying to not look like she was fussing.

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              • Yes, Don, Bill Mauldin was not doing well and Mauldin admirer Charles Schulz kindly tried to help. Very nice that you got Mauldin’s autograph; he was a cartooning legend. I also heard him speak in the 1980s (at a Newspaper Features Council meeting in San Francisco, I think) during a younger time in life when totally lucid.

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  13. I didn’t go to many bookstores when I was younger because I got my reading material from the library. A bookstore I enjoy now is Northshire Books in Manchester, Vermont. It started out as an inn, then expanded from that original building. There are many different levels and nooks and crannies to explore. And of course any kind of book you could possibly want.

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  14. Here in Los Angeles, I enjoyed browsing my favorite local Borders bookstore for the latest books by my favorite authors. Then, along came Amazon and changed all that.
    When I was broken and lost after the father of my sons abandoned us in Brazil, I approached a bookseller at my favorite bookstore in the city for help in finding my way forward. She recommended a book that saved my life ❤

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    • Thank you, Rosaliene! Sorry about your local Borders closing. The Borders outlets were quite nice as chain bookstores went. Amazon DID do a number on some brick-and-mortar bookstores.

      Very, very glad a bookseller was so helpful to you during a time when you were in great need.

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  15. I knew you would mention the Strand, Dave. I’ve been there several times and I’ve never left empty handed. I’ve also been to Powell’s in Portland. If you find yourself in Pittsburgh, move about 15-20 minutes down the Ohio and check out Penguin Bookshop in Sewickley, PA. I love spending time in a bookstore. Great topic!

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  17. In the prehistoric times of the 1970s, there were several used bookstores on West Broadway in Vancouver, BC. They were great places to find what I called “trashy” books at the time–mass-market paperbacks–for purely entertainment reading. One had several cats who would sometimes be found stretched out on the book display tables. Also a cage of parakeets and at least one dog. There were ashtrays scattered around, and one time I noticed a hot plate with chicken frying in a pan on the floor under a bookshelf. The proprietors were a couple of old women. The place was certainly funky, and memorable.

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  18. One of my favorite topics, Dave! And you have visited some interesting shops. My favorites are always the “used book” variety where a person’s money goes a long way:) Many top my list, but Snowbound Books is my favorite, and it’s set in one of my favorite towns, Marquette, MI, in the Upper Peninsula. At one time, I lived within walking distance of that store, which was heavenly!

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  19. Dave – I am delighted that you discussed what my father called “used books stores.” Wherever we travelled as a family, the first place that my father would take us was to a book store – not the fancy ones, but the ones that were owner operated. Ah, those were the best kinds. And now, I have carried on the tradition. I always look for the bookstore cat, and find that I am not disappointed. These cats reign and know, instinctively, who really loves books!!!

    I recognize that independent bookstores have faced numerous challenges in recent years. With the rise of online retailers and e-books, many people have turned away from traditional brick-and-mortar stores. But I truly believe the future of independent bookstores is secure. These unique establishments offer a personalized and curated experience that cannot be replicated online. Even so the digital age is with us and the transition to digital books is happening at a rapid pace based on access and environmental considerations.. I believe that independent books stories will adapt to new technologies. I have been following this closely over the past few years.

    Another great post, Dave – looking forward to following the discussion.

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    • Thank you, Rebecca! Great comment! I agree that independent bookstores will survive; they do indeed offer an experience that can’t be completely replicated online — including in-person author appearances, among other things. And wonderful that you have those memories of visiting non-fancy bookstores your father would take the family to. And cats and indie bookstores DO go together, like…indie bookstores and cats. 🙂

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    • I think you’re right Rebecca. We have a lovely one down the road here, family owned and operated, that moved from nearby Monifieth. That they did, showed they felt able to as I imagine the rates here would be higher. BUT there would be a lot more custom. They really show what can be done with an independent bookshop.

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  20. The bookstore that stands out in my mind is Moe’s on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, which sells both new and secondhand books–lots of secondhand books. Or at least it did between 1983 and 1987 when I was a graduate student in sociology there. I bought almost all the books I needed for my classes at Moe’s, mostly secondhand and already full of highlighting, which could be useful when you had too many books to read in a week and stay sane.

    Then there’s the Mysterious Bookshop on Warren Street in NYC that launched my first mystery, PESTICIDE, in 2022. I’m very grateful to them for hosting me!

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    • Thank you, Kim! That Berkeley bookstore sounds terrific! I was in Berkeley for a conference in 1987 (at the tail end of when you were a graduate student there) and must have passed Moe’s. Used, not-too-expensive books are VERY welcome for many students — as is the highlighting, as you note. 🙂

      And I can see why the Mysterious Bookshop has a special place in your (recent) memory!

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  21. Well Dave, I have behaved better in bookshops than libraries. There’s a wonderful one in York across from the Minster, a second one on several floors in a ricketty old building. And a really cool kind of book depot one–as in books that didn’t always sell– in Helmsley. A very ncie one down the road from us called the book house, an indy one Way back I loved the fact that the bookshops here were always a small one room in another shop, affair and crammed top to toe with books.

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