Tomorrow I will check out a few book stores. On my short-list are Idlewild Books and Three Lives. Otherwise, I’ll probably just walk around and pop into whatever store that catches my fancy.
I love books, and I love bookstores – old, new, big-chain, mom-and-pop. That’s why even though the Kindle has gotten rave reviews, I couldn’t quite bring myself to make the move to digital books. I like flipping the actual pages! And the feel of aged paper! And the book itself – a satisfying rectangular box that, once opened, can bring you into a different world.
Tomorrow, I’ll try hard not to buy too many books. But I figured one is okay. 
One thing that I’ve noticed about New York is that it’s a city of readers, more so than Southern California – or at least NYC has many more public readers. I’ve seen people reading on the subway and in parks and it makes me feel so great to be in such a literary city. I think SoCal has its shares of readers too, but like everything else in that area, we are just much more dispersed.
I did see a driver reading an entire book on a freeway once. I hope to never see that again.
***And speaking of reading, the current Carnival of Personal Finance is up! Please mosey on over for a dose of scintillating personal financial literature.
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You should also check out Strand Books!
Oh I love reading. I just finished two books on my vacation in Montreal. My favorite: Michell Moran’s Cleopatra’s Daughter. (437 pages of a brilliant tale, so fascinating). It is great to be in a city with great old book stores. I loved the ones in Montreal and Toronto! Oh off to finishing the post about Moran’s fab novel, highly recommend it!
Definitely check out the Strand. Also nearby is the first Barnes & Noble in Union Square. Book Culture up by Columbia is neat. Murder Ink on the Upper West Side is now closed, but I think it hasn’t been replaced so you could peer in. Shakespeare & Co on the Upper East Side is also great.
Also, if you’re a lover of book history, you might want to pop into the Sephora on Fifth Ave and 48th Street–it was originally the Charles Scribner & Sons publishing house, is architecturally beautiful, and yay great makeup!
I used to read CONSTANTLY when I lived in Big City, East Coast… because I took the subway to work. Now that I have to drive though, I rarely crack a book open. Sad!
Ugh, yup, I’ve seen many a people driving their cars on the freeway reading newspapers and reading books. I’ve read maps before, but that is about it – and usually just a quick glance. I’d say that it is harder to read in SoCal when the weather never gets bad – so you don’t have hours upon end inside with nothing else to do but to pick up a good book. And so, it breads a lot of people who have never read a single book since high school.
Echos the calls for Strand. I could LIVE in that store.
Definitely go to the Strand!!
Another vote for the Strand–the HousingWorks bookstore is awesome, too.
We’re gonna go on a bookstore tour in LA! you wait and see…
So, what’d you get? Love bookstores!
I always visit book stores when I travel also! Books are like friends that you really enjoy spending time with.