# Most exceptional bookstores in the world... **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 21, 2006, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-exceptional-bookstores-in-the-world/381228 "2006-11-21T01:35:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![auRa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c4cdca/32.png) [@auRa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/auRa)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2006, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-exceptional-bookstores-in-the-world/381228/41 "2006-11-22T20:02:18Z")
A lot of my visiting friends have commented on the [Academic Bookstore](http://www.greatbuildings.com/cgi-bin/gbi.cgi/Academic_Bookshop.html/cid_3126646.html) in Helsinki, designed by Alvar Aalto in the 60’s. The interior is light and airy, not stuffy or cramped. The atmosphere’s really nice, I can find pretty much any book I want there or have it ordered, and there’s a café and restaurant on the second floor. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2006, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-exceptional-bookstores-in-the-world/381228/42 "2006-11-22T21:37:56Z")
[QUOTE=Declan] Its been ages since I was in [the World’s Biggest Bookstore]. Back when I was a teenager it was the number one place to get a lot of science fiction that was not on the shelves at coles bookstores , pre chapters era. Fond memories of picking up a couple of books for ten bucks an heading to the food court at the eaton center. Declan [/QUOTE] Yes, the World’s Biggest was a big-box bookshop before there were big-box bookshops. It’s not connected to the Coles/Chapters/Indigo conglomerate. (I think it may have been the actual world’s biggest bookstore when it was built somewhere before 1980.) But speaking of science-fiction bookshops, there’s Bakka Books in Toronto. It’s apparently now back on Queen Street West, but west of Spadina. (Must check it out again…) ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2006, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-exceptional-bookstores-in-the-world/381228/43 "2006-11-22T21:38:58Z")
Sorry. It _is_ connected to Chapters/Indigo/Coles. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2006, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-exceptional-bookstores-in-the-world/381228/44 "2006-11-22T21:50:35Z")
[QUOTE=gitfiddle] My girlfriend is one of the editors of a Chinese-language arts and culture magazine based here in Taipei. She just told me her next story will be on particular bookstores around the world that stand out for one reason or another: ambiance, theme, architecture, etc. [/quote] Although bricks & mortar may be implied, your criterion didn’t exclude Amazon. Since I live nowhere near any of those fine stores mentioned so far, Amazon is the place I shop for books the most. High in ambience, theme and architecture. And I suspect the stock quantity compares favorably to the biggest of the bricks & mortar stores and its sales probably exceed any of them. Your GF shouldn’t omit it. ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lichtman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeff_lichtman/32/1531_2.png) [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2006, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-exceptional-bookstores-in-the-world/381228/45 "2006-11-22T23:50:02Z")
[QUOTE=silenus] [Cody’s](http://www.codysbooks.com/) in Berkeley. . . [/QUOTE] Cody’s closed their original Telegraph Avenue store several months ago. The Fourth Street store is still open, but many of the shelves are empty. The business was sold to a management company, and who knows what they will do with it? So I wouldn’t put Cody’s in a list of the world’s most exceptional bookstores. It may have belonged in such a list a few years ago, but not any more. ---
**Author:** ![koeeoaddi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/koeeoaddi/32/408_2.png) [@koeeoaddi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koeeoaddi)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2006, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-exceptional-bookstores-in-the-world/381228/46 "2006-11-23T01:07:00Z")
[Elliot Bay Book Company](http://www.elliottbaybook.com/about/index.jsp) in Seattle is a wonderful store (yay independents), and Bookmans in Tucson is pleasant. Neither of them is Powells, though. I haven’t been there in about 20 years, but last time I was there, their Nature Section was almost as big as my house. It had an entire bay just on insects, with a whole shelf devoted to ants. You have to admire that kind of compulsive variety. I hear that since then, they’ve expanded, too. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2006, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-exceptional-bookstores-in-the-world/381228/47 "2006-11-23T03:56:01Z")
Here’s a website including many of the bookstores mentioned so far: > **[Bookstore Hall of Fame: A personal list of the best bookstores](http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/bkstrhof.html)** > > Robert Teeter picks the bookstore hall of fame; nominate your favorites Let me make a note in particular of Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C. For those of you in the U.S. who watch a lot of Book TV on C-Span, it’s the most common place for C-Span to film an author reading. For those of you outside of the U.S., C-Span is a set of three channels that are available on most cable TV providers in the U.S. They are all 24-hour channels and don’t have any commercials. They show all the Senate and House of Representatives proceedings, not just on the main floor but also a lot of committee hearings. They also do a lot of meetings and speeches all over the U.S. with political implications. (They at least used to show Prime Minister’s Question Time from the British House of Commons too. I don’t know if they’re still showing it.) They do 48 hours every week on C-Span 2 (from Saturday 6:00 AM to Monday 6:00 AM) with just events concerned with books with political implications. (Besides books about politics, they do books about American history and biographies of politically important people.) This means author readings and signings in bookstores, talks at literary festivals by authors, and interviews with authors. If you sat there for all 48 hours each week, you might see a half a dozen to a dozen different author readings from Politics and Prose. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-exceptional-bookstores-in-the-world/381228.md?page=2)