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.

Best Used Bookstore? Reston's Used Bookshop in Virginia. Great kids section, lots of modern fiction, comfy chairs to sit and read, wonderful used cookbooks and biographies, live dulcimer player on weekends, and, best part of all? My mom's store, so the books were all free. She has since sold it, so I have to pay for my books, but it's still a terrific store and one of my first stops whenever I go home.

Robin, where is this store of which you speak?

I've lived in NoVa for almost 17 years -- including 1-1/2 years just off Lawyers Rd., a stone's throw from the Reston line -- and haven't found a decent used bookshop.

I was very much a fan of Avenue Victor Hugo, before it went under. Excellent general fiction and SF collections.

The Brattle Bookshop and Boston Book Annex are the only two I know of (of any quality) inside city limits now, and neither of them have the kind of collection development AVH worked so hard at. In the Brattle, you'll find 12 copies of Proust, volume 1 of a 1888 repritn of Little Dorrit, and several out of print Isaac Asimov novels, but not the other, mid-list stuff, which IMHO is the bread-and-butter of used book sales.

McIntyre and Moore, near my house, isn't bad, but its focus is avowedly academic. Sometimes I can still find something good in the basement of the Harvard Bookshop, but not often. ...Actually, one of the reasons I go to cons is for better used book shopping opportunities.

(Yes, I'm a luddite; I still need to hold the book in my hands before I decide to buy it. So, I haven't gone far in online buying yet.)