Wonderful Bookshops to Visit

[Lady Grey]

I love book stores, and thought I'd start a thread for particularly great ones people have visited and would recommend (because ALL bookshops are great ).


I personally really love Waterstones Deansgate in Manchester (UK). If I'm in town and start feeling particularly anxious, I go there to browse and calm down. It's over 3 floors and has a cafe as well. (I notice quite a few Waterstones are adding Costa Coffee's/cafes actually).
The Waterstones in Chester City Centre (UK) is lovely as well. It's set into the rows and it's lovely inside.

[Jubal]

If you haven't been to Cecil Court in London, that has to be high on the list - a whole street of unusual/antiquarian bookshops

[Othko97]

This place is fantastic!

[Jubal]

Also, Foyle's in London is nice and huge and suchlike.

[Lizard]

There used to be a wonderful second-hand bookshop in Birmingham. Exactly like you'd imagine a Diagon Alley shop to be - all uneven floors and piles of books to the ceiling which had no business remaining upright without magic. You could get everything from text books to popular fiction to 10-cent American spy thrillers from the 60s. Obviously I bought a LOT of those in my four years in the city.


I revisited Birmingham recently, and it was closed. The hand-scrawled note in the window read "We have closed. Not moved, just gone."


I was cry.

[Glaurung]

Hmmm... let me see...

Cambridge
- Heffer's: for many years Cambridge's only large bookshop, and still catering for mainly for the academic and reference market. A fairly ordinary shop front, leading back into a much larger space with four levels - a sort of bibliophile's cave
- Waterstone's: larger than Heffer's, on four floors. The SF and fantasy is in a quiet area at the back of the ground floor, and they even provide comfy chairs

London
- Stanford's: this one is the UK's best-known specialist map seller, and I could browse there for hours.

Oxford
- Blackwell's: the Oxford equivalent of Heffer's, with the same sort of layout - small on the outside, huge on the inside. I've not explored all the side passages and basement levels, but it could easily be the local portal to Pratchett's L-space.

[Lady Grey]

I want to go to all these places! D:


Lizard - that's so sad!



Also, not a bookshop really, but we visited the John Ryland's Library in Manchester on Valentine's Day. It was beautiful!

[Pentagathus]

There's a second hand bookshop in Edinburgh but I can't remember the name of it or the name of the street and I imagine theres more than one second hand bookshop in Edinburgh so this isn't very useful. It was in the old town center though, think it was fairly close to Blackfriars.

[Jubal]

I wonder if anyone's ever written a guide to the UK's best second hand bookshops...

[Lizard]

I wonder if anyone's ever written a guide to the UK's best second hand bookshops...

Seems like a job for Google. And if they haven't, I see an opportunity...

[Pentagathus]

I wonder if anyone's ever made a guide to Britain's second best second hand bookshops.

[Lizard]

I wonder if anyone's ever made a guide to Britain's second best second hand bookshops.

We should probably set a termination clause for this kind of recursive silliness, before we start on the databases.