Anyone who comes to Salt Lake, there is a bookstore here that rivals Powells. Seriously. It's called Sam Weller's, and it's right downtown. Yes, they shelve the used books with the new. Yes, they have an independant coffee shop inside. Yes, they have the obligatory used book store basement, so byzitinely designed you need a guide book and a trail of crumbs to find your way out.
Spike ,'Same Time, Same Place'
We're Literary 2: To Read Makes Our Speaking English Good
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
you need a guide book and a trail of crumbs to find your way out.
"Out"? I don't understand. People actually try to get out?
That's the mother ship, baby!
Yes, but even the employees are afraid to venture down there. Particularly into the "Biography" section. There's no way you can get food delivered to you.
And you will soon run out of crumbs.
Well, I always knew, in the back of my mind, that books would kill me one way or another.
Mmmm, Sam Weller's ... the basement ... down the stairs, around the pillar, over the raised bit where they cut the hole through the wall, down a step and through the door ...
Have you been there lately, Connie?
Two weeks ago.
I really, really like what they've done with it.
[Edit] And now that they've opened up the COffee Garden in there, that's where I get my coffee in the morning. I used to go to the (blech!) Starbucks in the Marriott on State, so I'm very very happy about this development. I hop off the light rail, and boom! My coffee's right there. Sometimes they see me coming and have it started before I get there.
It's taking some getting used to, because I liked all the used stuff down in the basement. I don't like going up and down the stairs between Sci-Fi and Fantasy and the writing books and the Biographies.
Still, if I lived in Salt Lake itself and had more leeway in jobs, I'd beg to work there. I haven't had time to just hang out in the coffee shop yet, I'm generally just passing through downtown on my way to my sister's. I'll have to just take a couple of hours some day and hang out with my notebook and a mocha.
Thinking about The Bookshop in Chapel Hill, which would be my choice for #1 used bookstore. Definitely #1 among the ones I've been to.
Started out in a long, narrow building. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves front to back. Barely enough space for a walkway down the middle. Well, except for the small play area in the children's book section. Way, way in the back was the bargain corner -- paperbacks 25 cents, hardcover 50 cents. And you never knew what you'd find there -- I snagged a 1930s edition of Anthony Adverse (1200-page novel, huge bestseller in its day) for 50 cents.
At some point, they expanded into the building next door. The annex was a little more open The shelves didn't extend quite so high.
Bookstore heaven.