A Reader's List: America's Best Independent Bookstores

The readers of this blog are exactly the folks always searching for a new, wonderful bookstore.  So this seemed like the perfect place to establish a list of the country's top bookstores.  I'll kick it off, perhaps adding as I think more about it.  But I hope that commenters will share lots of ideas.  If this gets going, I'll try to incorporate comments into the post for easy reading (perhaps organizing by state).  

This is one crowdsourcing exercise that might actually make a difference in some of our lives!

Update: I have incorporated suggestions from commenters to facilitate reading.

Asheville, NC area:

Malaprops Bookstore
City Lights Bookstore (Sylva)

Birmingham area:

Alabama Booksmith (new and used)

Boston area:

Brattle Bookshop (used and antiquarian) 
Brookline Booksmith
Harvard Bookstore (Cambridge)
Bryn Mawr Book Store (used) 

Burlington VT area:

Flying Pig Bookstore (Shelburne)

Charlotte area:

Park Road Books

Chicago area:

Barbara's Bookstore
Seminary Coop
Unabridged Bookstore
The Book Table

Denver area:

Tattered Cover

Hudson Valley/Catskills NY

Spotty Dog Books & Ale (Hudson)
Golden Note Book (Woodstock)

Iowa City

Prairie Lights

Lexington KY

Joseph-Beth Booksellers (three other locations including Cincinnati)

Lexington VA

Books & Co

Miami

Books & Books (multiple locations)

Minneapolis area:

Magers and Quinn

New York area

Mysterious Bookshop
St. Marks Bookshop
The Strand
The Community Bookstore (Brooklyn)
Greenlight Bookstore (Brooklyn)

Oxford MS

Square Books

Philadelphia area:

Joseph Fox Bookshop 
A Children's Place Bookstore 

Portland, OR area:

Powell's Books

Raleigh-Durham area:

Regulator Bookshop
(Durham)Fly Leaf Books
2nd Edition
The Bookshop
The Internationalist

Richmond:

The Fountain Bookstore

San Francisco area:

City Lights Booksellers
Green Apple Books
Moe's (used) (Berkeley)
Black Oak Books (used) (Berkeley)
Kepler's Books (Menlo Park) 

Santa Barbara

Chaucer's Bookstore
The Book Den (used)

Seattle area:

Elliott Bay Book Company
Upper Case Books (Snohomish)

St. Louis area:

Left Bank Books

St. Petersburg

Haslam's Book Store

Vero Beach FL

Vero Beach Book Center

Washington DC area:

Kramerbooks
Politics and Prose
Hooray for Books! (Children's) (Alexandria) 

 

Comments

[Heidi Kitrosser]

Magers & Quinn in Minneapolis, Minnesota!

[Bob Strassfeld]

I don't know if used/antiquarian book shops are eligible for the list. If so, Brattle Street Books in Cambridge, Ma. has long been a cherished Boston institution.

[Brian Clarke]

Park Road Books in Charlotte

[Anon]

Tattered Cover, Denver, Colorado

[Billy]

There is nothing like the Seminary Co-op in Hyde Park, on the U of C campus.

[Jordy Singer]

I'll second the vote for the Tattered Cover in Denver -- I could spend weeks there. I also love Brookline Booksmith and Harvard Book Store in the Boston area.

[Tom Gallanis]

The Seminary Co-Op in Hyde Park (Chicago) is wonderful. Also highly recommended are Unabridged Books in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago and Prairie Lights in Iowa City, Iowa.

[Alfred Brophy]

I agree with Jordy about Harvard Book Store -- that's an easy one. Great used book section in the basement, too. (If you're thinking about used books in Cambridge, I think the Bryn Mawr book store out on Huron is definitely worth a trip.

In Chapel Hill Fly Leaf Books (next to the fabulous Foster's Market) is worth a visit; and I'd add the student bookstore at UNC has a fantastic and large book section. It's not quite the Harvard Book Store, but it's very strong.

As to used books, I'm actually partial to the 2nd Edition bookstore inside the RDU airport. Now that says something very positive about the triangle that they have a used bookstore inside the terminal!

And The Bookshop on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill is another absolutely fantastic used bookstore. The Internationalist, which is across the street from The Bookshop is good if you're looking for radical literature. Worth a visit, certainly.

[Alfred Brophy]

Ok--couple of other thoughts here. Was just talking with a Richmond friend a week or two ago about The Fountain, a charming bookstore downtown in Shockoe Slip. Hadn't thought of that place in years, but I'm glad to learn it's still there. I'd also add the Virginia Book Company, which basically serves the VCU community but has (or did twenty years ago, anyway) a pretty good collection of new academic books.

[Kent Schenkel]

Haslam's in St. Petersburg, FL.

[Richard Gershon]

Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi.

http://www.squarebooks.com/about

[former Bay Arean]

Other good Bay Area bookshops: Moe's and Black Oak Books in Berkeley, Green Apple in the Inner Richmond (SF).

[Mike Madison]

Kepler's in Menlo Park, California (sort of the Silicon Valley).

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

In Santa Barbara, California: Chaucer's Bookstore and The Book Den (the latter is largely a used bookstore). (And I second those two Berkeley bookstores above.)

I've ordered books from Strand Book Store in NY city, does anyone know about that bookstore (I've never been there)?

[Paul]

A few more: Malaprops in Asheville, Joseph-Beth in Lexington (Kentucky) and Cincinnati, and the Mysterious Bookshop in NYC.

[Amy]

A second vote for Green Apple Books in San Francisco on Clement Street.

[former Bay Arean]

I lived in NYC a while ago and never liked the Strand as much as I felt like I should, or as much as I liked (for example) Moe's. More books at the Strand, but also more not-so-interesting books to wade through to get to the interesting ones, especially on the sale carts outside. The Strand also tended in my experience to be very crowded, space-wise and with people. It was almost on the scale of Powell's in Portland, but in a much smaller space, with more customers. But maybe it has changed for the better!

There used to be some great used bookstores around the corner from the Strand on 17th and 18th Streets, but I think they might all be gone now.

[Becca Rausch]

Elliot Bay Books in Seattle

[j ross]

City Lights Bookstore Sylva, NC!!!! www.citylightsnc.com

[Howard Wasserman]

Books & Books (Coral Gables, FL, and Miami Beach, FL)