What are your favorite book stores?

[susanne]

What are your favorite book stores?

I love a great book store as much as I love the books themselves. Not so much the ubiquitous megastores like Barnes & Noble (although I love those, too), but the unique, quaint, little stores that reflect the owners' love of books, and the used book stores with shelf after shelf of mildly musty hidden treasures.

Portland is blessed to have possibly the greatest used book stores in the world: Powells Books -- an entire city block (now spilling onto another block, plus other outlets around town) with multiple levels of fabulous new and used books. Keith and I have long consider Powells our favorite cheap date and can spend hours lost in the stacks. They have an in-house coffee shop, where you can take books you are considering (or just want to look through. The amazing thing is that, as big as Powells is, it is never cold or impersonal. Every stack, every aisle, every quirky corner feels like home.

Sadly, the small book stores and even the mighty Powells are being affected by ebooks. I feel guilty that almost all of my fiction reading is done on my Kindle, but I want to continue supporting the local stores and plan to purchase the hard copies of my favorite fiction -- and still, of course, buy all of my nonfiction reading in true book form.

 

[Jill]

Audible.com and Amazon.com

 

[susanne]

I do love Amazon, and buy most of my Kindle ebooks there. It's great being able to peruse fiction there and order in the middle of the night if I wish. But there is nothing like a brick and mortar book store and the wonderful smell and feel of a good old book.

 

[Jill]

Not for me. I like to shop online whenever possible for everything possible (even do my groceries online and then just pick them up when the order is shopped). For books, I like being able to read reviews, listen to (or read) a segment of the book, etc., right here at home with my favorite reading buddies

 

[KanoasDestiny]

Hands down, my favorite place to shop is Amazon.com. I also enjoy Ebay sometimes. I prefer online shopping because I can always find exactly what I'm looking for, and like Jill said, I can read reviews and do research on the books before I buy them.

I also love Barnes and Noble. I could easy spend the majority of my day in there just browsing along the shelves. But usually I have my husband with me and I always end up feeling rushed. I do occasionally go to a couple of used book stores, but there isn't usually a big selection on the types of books I enjoy reading (urban fantasy or young adult). When I'm out with my best friend, I'll go to the local library or thrift stores and browse through the books they sell. Again, I usually don't find much. I find that I tend to be kind of picky with what I'll read, so I feel impatient when I'm looking through books that don't interest me.

 

[Jill]

Oh another good online book place is half.com

It's hooked in with eBay, I think. Good book deals there!!!

 

[KanoasDestiny]

Jill, I've been to Half.com a couple of times and it always confuses me because I can never find shipping prices. Am I missing something?

Another place that I might buy from in the future is AbeBooks.com Their books are usually $0.50+ cheaper then at Amazon. I'm so used to the ease of Amazon though, that it's hard to venture out and use different sites. Lol

 

[Tremor]

I'm not one to buy online.

I like Half Price Books and there is a book store a half hour away from me that I need to venture into....

 

[Kendra]

Powell`s sounds amazing Susanne!

There are a few used book stores that I love to shop at - and try to resist whenever possible as I have absolutely no self control in a used book store.My friend always says, "Let's go to Fair's Fair, I'll hold your wallet!" None of them have a coffee shop though. If they did I might never leave!

Our local branch of Chapters is fun too, but I can get a much bigger, more satisfying stack of books at Fair's Fair! http://www.fairsfair.com/

 

[susanne]

.

Kendra, I don't know how we managed not to hit Powells when you and Jenn were in Portland! Next time you're down this way (perhaps for a CDE?), we'll have to go.

.

 

[Kendra]

.

Kendra, I don't know how we managed not to hit Powells when you and Jenn were in Portland! Next time you're down this way (perhaps for a CDE?), we'll have to go.

.

Couple-three years and we have a date!

 

[Jill]

Jill, I've been to Half.com a couple of times and it always confuses me because I can never find shipping prices. Am I missing something?

I don't think may of the sellers offer shipping options to choose from, but if you buy multiple books from one seller, they discount the shipping automatically. What i do usually is go through and select whatever books I'm after, and then look at the shipping when I'm ready to check out. If it's out of line, I see "who" is charging too much and usually get rid of that selection. About the only kind of books I've bought the past few years are hobbies like fishkeeping. I do like those in physical form, vs. electronic. But it's easy, just go through and shop what you want, and then you will see the bottom line before you purchase your "basket" and can remove items that are out of line in shipping (most are real reasonable and arrive w/in a week in my experience).

 

[KanoasDestiny]

I'll have to try that. I was scared that I wouldnt find out until my order was already going through and then they'd sock it to me. Lol

 

[lucky seven]

I used to go to garage sales that advertised books, but not to long ago we had a problem with bed bugs coming up from the city so I stopped. My small town library has a shelf with books to sell so I always look threw them and go to their book sales. I love Barnes and Noble also but since hubby is with me, I end up just looking at some sections quickly. I should buy online at my leisure. My daughter buys everything amazon.com so I think I will try them also.

 

[Sterling]

Our home town library has a "Friends of the Library" room inside the library itself. Books are a steal. All paperbacks for 50 cents and all hardbacks for $1. I like a good old fashioned hold in your hand paper type of book...can't get into the Kindle and new fangled ways to read now days.

 

[susanne]

.

I love the library sales...and garage sales...and...

 

[KanoasDestiny]

Our library never has a good selection of books for sale (it's a very tiny room). But last time, I did find the Nanny McPhee book in there. Don't ask me why I bought it, I guess I was just looking for some light-hearted reading. Lol. It's fun to go in there and look sometimes though. I'm extremely jealous of people who have huge libraries available to them.

 

[Remali]

Hello, I'm a newbie here! I'm a total book worm (andhorse nut too), I can't wait to get into your book-of-the-month, I may be a little late for the December book though, but I"ll be ready for next time.

We don't have very many nice book stores here, I like the unusual little out of the way shops (prefer stores to shopping online), we used to have a Borders here and I used to spend hours in there just looking and wandering, and buying, it had everything I loved... books, music, food, and unusual items that were hard to find at other places. But, it was replaced by a Books A Million, it's just not the same, but it's about all we have here (except for maybe one book shop at the Mall). We do have a fairly nice library, and I go there quite often

 

[lucky seven]

Hi! Thanks for joining in the fun! It's not too late if you want to read this month's selection. I would be interested in hearing what you think of the book. Not many have said if they like or dislike or even read it.

 

[KanoasDestiny]

Welcome Remali, I hope you like it here and I'm glad to see you posting.

Like Lucky said, there's still plenty of time to read this month's book-of-the-month. We'll set up the voting process for future books during the last week of every month, though I may do it a little earlier this month because of the holidays.