Recent bookstore finds

Three bookstores explored while wandering around Sacramento, CA. From the Convention Center, you can hit all three in a five-mile walking loop. (Though there is also a light rail system and buses, if you plan to make a bunch of purchases.)

Time Tested Books (1114 21st Street -- between L and K streets). A friendly used book store in the Midtown area. Bright and clean. They offer a nice return plan if you plan to keep a steady flow of used books in circulation.

Beers Books (915 S Street). Sacramento's oldest bookstore, in a quieter area. A good and funky selection of used and new items. Bargain bins outside. Fun art on the wall. Yes, beer and coffee served in an adjacent cafe.

The Avid Reader (1600 Broadway). An independent seller of new books. Friendly staff, good variety and display of books. Located just south of a busy highway. On the same street with several good restaurants.

Check out this 2007 coverage of Sacramento area bookstores.

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Recent bookstore finds

Two used bookstores in Tennessee:

Lowbrow: Book Warehouse, Pigeon Forge, TN. A treat to find along 441, the main drag through town, which is otherwise mainly filled with flapjack houses and mini golf. Two floors, with a very eclectic selection—good literary prose and politics, religious books and remainders.

High brow: Burke’s Books, Memphis, TN. Wonderful. The oldest used bookstore in the state and one of the oldest independent bookstores in the country.

Two used bookstores in Las Vegas:

Lowbrow: Book Magician Rather lackluster used bookstore in a strip mall (northwest of the Strip, across for the Omelet House). Good variety of genre fiction, not much in the way of academic tomes.

High brow: Bauman Rare Books: Their website gives an apt description: “In February of 2008 we opened our third location, a gallery in the Palazzo in Las Vegas, which replicates our Madison Avenue gallery in design, inventory and exceptional customer service, but provides the added dimension of being open over twelve hours a day, seven days a week, and has the distinction of being perhaps the only place in the world where you can purchase a Shakespeare folio at 10:30 on a Saturday night.”

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