Great thread, Eve.
My fave dusty used bookstore would be Book Rendezvous in downtown Baltimore. It’s on Calvert St. right above Baltimore Street.
My favorite books to purchase are old schoolbooks. I have some from the late 19th century but most are from the early 20th. One finds the neatest hand written notes therein.
I love the smell of old books in the morning (well, anytime, really).
There is a line from the film Silverado where Kevin Klien walks into the saloon in Silverado and takes a deep breath, “I love the smell of a good saloon.”
I’m that way with a good used bookstore.
My wife and I, both bookaholics, generally plan trips around noted used book stores and have been known to take an extra-long side trip if someone has mentioned there is a charming, good, or unique bookstore in a given community.
Perhaps the roughest thing is when a good, old used bookstore becomes trendy and all the clerks start dressing better than the customers and carrying new books. It just spoils it. That happened to the Tattered Cover in Denver and to a lesser extent the Bluebird Cafe (a combination of a cafe and used bookstore) in that same community. The same goes for the Chinook in Colorado Springs.
Boston Book Annex, on Beacon just near the Boston/Brookline border- 900’s maybe? Anyway, it’s very dusty, and they have two cats- one of them does the oddest thing- it won’t stop licking you! (Bare skin only.) I wonder if it could be a salt or mineral deficiency.
BTW, CalMeacham, it turns out I’ve met you in real life. You came and gave a talk to my department (about the Medusa thing) a few months back, before I was a Doper (although I was a lurker).
Must have just been you, Ike, I remember the woman quite fondly! 
(Actually, I suspect it was because it was your “teenage hangout”, I think she treated adults a little differently.)
What I remember is that although there were about a million books in the store, she could walk over and pull any one of them from the shelf on request, and always had a recommendation on any subject matter.
I still miss the place. Although there are still used bookstores in Cleveland such as the Erie Street bookstore and Bookstore on West 25th, there will never be another Kay’s.
To change to another locale, however, I highly recommend the Bluestem Books store in Lincoln, Nebraska. Pet the bookstore cat for me, it’s been a while since I’ve been able to visit there.
Man, I get to be the one to praise Powell’s in Portland, Ore. If I had no other reason to go to Portland, which is a great city in which to be a pedestrian, I’d still go just for Powell’s. Floors and floors of books, new and used. A got a good chunk of my library from there.
The other bookstore I’ll mention is Michael’s Books in Bellingham, Wash. A good selection, but one of my favorite things to check on every visit is a bulletin board where they place the little bits of peoples’ lives that are left between the pages of books,i.e. photos, newspaper clippings, letters, notes, lists.
Years ago, my dad took me down to a colossal mom’n’pop.
Somewhere in Long Beach there’s a place called “Acres of Books” which I swear is where they film movies where kids find copies of the Necronomicon and somesuch. There were at least three cats running around, and the “back shelves” seemed to extend into a warehouse. It’s the kind of place that you begin to fear to tread in for fear of being buried in an earthquake and not being discovered until months later.
Actually, they’ve got a minimal site up: Acres of Books. Go spend an afternoon there if you get a chance.
The damn server ate my first reply, but this thread is so worth reposting to…
Formative childhood bookstore: A little shop on Pioneer Square in Seattle (well pre -gentrification and -gallerification). One of its principal charms was that although only the proprietor could find anything, when asked, he could also find everything within moments. I remember him as a kindly, fifty-ish man who shared many of my father’s interests (boy toys: ships, trains, engines). He retired, the store dissolved, and the neighborhood saw elaborate, federally-funded restoration, ensuring that no such store could ever return.
In my teens, I found a new-used combo called A Different Light, on Broadway in Capitol Hill (again, Seattle). It was the first semi-gay bookstore I ever went to, and I will always remember the smell of old paper, dust, and incense, which the store sold but never burned.
Nowadays, one of the best places to find used bookstores is in dumpy, forgotten strip malls in the suburbs, where the rent is cheap enough to allow them. One such gem may still exist in Gaithersburg, Maryland, off of Shady Grove Road, where about 15 years ago I found a first edition of Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen’s Copper Sun – with incredible woodblock illustrations in high deco style. How it got there I’ll never know, but I’ll always be grateful for that place.
Sigh.
Ack! Ack! Ack! Not “A Different Light”, that incompetent microchain that manage to fail at owning a gay bookstore in Chelsea, ferchrissakes. “A Different Drummer”. I remember looking through the Seattle yellow pages in search of a gay bookstore. This was 1983, so I didn’t expect it to announce itself as a GAY BOOKSTORE. But I saw the name, saw the location (the middle of Seattle’s gay ghetto), and figured I couldn’t be too far wrong. And I wasn’t. 
THANKS A BUNDLE!
I am going to Washington State and southern British Columbia next month and now I have a list of THREE bookstore to check out! does the Snoopy dance
Even more fun for ME!
Of course everyone else will be bored and whining “when are we leaving?” but I don’t hear anyone when I a in a bookstore:D
While dusty used book stores are a treasure, let’s not forget that you can sometimes find treasures at your local library book sale.
The one here in Richmond happens twice a year (spring and fall), and patrons who have donated to the literary fund during the previous year get first dibs (you get in a day early). It was at the library sale that I found my copy of "Hippies, Drugs, and Promiscuity, “The Report of Her Majesties Government on the Hashish Trade in India - 1885,” and “The Common Sense Medical Advisor.” The last was published by a doctor from Buffalo, NY in the late 1800s and is chock full of “testimonials” on how well such patent medicines as “Dr. Pierce’s Purgative Pellets” curied patients of “women’s nervousness” and “catarrah.” The book also suggests that old people and young children should never sleep in the same room because old people give off “effluvia” and that women should refrain from bicycle riding because it “excites the organs of generation.”
All of that, plus you get to support your local library, which probably comes out on the short end of the municipal budget stick every year.
I forgot to add that there is a bookstore here in Richmond named “Sandor’s” that, in addition to having a fair selection of regular titles, has a huge selection of used pornography.
Mr. Sandor, may he rest in peace, had cerebral palsy and it was practically impossible to understand anything he said - more often than not I found myself just nodding in agreement and talking to him in a very slow, very loud voice as if he were deaf (I have no idea why). I only ventured into the porn section once, and there were boxes and boxes and boxes of the stuff. Every conceivable fetish, proclivity, and genre seemed to be represented. Just the thought of a used porno mag is enough to make your skin crawl, isn’t it?
Also, Mr. Sandor did not seem to believe that changing the cat litter was something that must be done on a regular basis. On bad days it made your eyes water. The place was seriously funky.
In NYC you also have a lot of street vendors, selling tablesful of old books. Another good place is furniture stores: they buy old books in bulk to put on their bookshelf displays, and I have found some salespeople very amenable to selling (or giving) me a volume that takes my fancy.
Still, my heart lies in dusty old bookstores . . . I always feel like Aladdin entering the magic cave (that was Aladdin, right?) when I open the door and smell that old-book smell . . .
Oh, God. My past’s catching up with me again. (I once worked with a guy who was in one of the classes I taught as a Visiting Professor at Tufts.)
You musta been at Providence College, Melandry. I’ve since given other talks in the Boston area, but not about Medusa (I’ve gone on to other topics).
I’ll have to look up the Boston Book Annex. (This isn’t the bookstore near Natick, is it? They sell new books. And not a cat in sight. But I thought that was their name.)
Sadly, DC has lost many of its used bookstores (a sob for Atticus, where I used to work). Idle Time Books on 18th St. is my favorite place now—a tall rowhouse with a cat, of course, and random nooks and crannies packed with books.
When I took a short business trip to Phoenix, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. That place must be nearly the capital of used bookstores. The main shop I hit was called the Book Gallery (I think). Found Ray Bradbury’s Long After Midnight for 3 bucks and drooled over their children’s illustrated books.
Like any good DC reader, I mourn the passing of the annual Goodwill Book Sale. Imagine hundreds of thousands of books for very reasonable prices, with new books coming onto the floor every day for five days. The best day was 1/2 price day: half price on everything except rare books. And we lost the Vassar Book Sale a couple years ago. Sigh.
I used to go to Gotham Book Mart (“Wise Men Fish Here”) quite a bit. It comes complete with dust, creaky hardwood floors, little framed pictures of literary stalwarts, some shelves the books are two deep, it’s a good old place. The old singer in my old band was pining away for an out of print book called “The Incredible Mike Todd” or something like that. Found it at Gotham.
I used to go to Gotham Book Mart (“Wise Men Fish Here”) quite a bit. It comes complete with dust, creaky hardwood floors, little framed pictures of literary stalwarts, some shelves the books are two deep, it’s a good old place. The old singer in my old band was pining away for an out of print book called “The Incredible Mike Todd” or something like that. Found it at Gotham.
I suppose that’s one thing to be grateful for here in Atlanta: that we still have a several annual book sales that seem to be thriving. I went to the Brandeis Book Sale in Toco Hills this year for the first time in several years, and there was still lots of traffic on the fourth day of the sale just a half-hour before closing, with almost everyone carrying at least an armload. The American Association of University Women sale at Lenox Square still seems to do pretty well each year. And I think we still have a Goodwill Book Sale at Northlake Mall (did a couple of years ago anyway – my son (now 5) was old enough to walk and crawl around under the tables while I browsed the last time I went).
Actually, I just did a little checking . . . the reason I missed this year’s Goodwill sale was that they moved it from Northlake Mall (where I have reason to be on a semi-regular basis) to the Goodwill Industries North Georgia Headquarters down on Glenwood Avenue. Never even heard about the one that just happened, but apparently, they’re going to do it three times a year now.
In checking into this, I also discovered that the Candler Library at Emory University is planning to have a sale September 18-21. 11,000 books, 75% hardcovers, $1 each, paperbacks 50 cents.
CalMeacham No, it was at BU- The Myth and Religion Study Group, I think is the title of the lecture series?
And no, the Boston Book Annex probably isn’t the one in Natick, this one is right by Elephant Walk not too far up Beacon from Kenmore Square.
I found a turn of the century copy of Tom Sawyer Abroad at Mercer Books priced at $1.00:D, but when I took it to the register to buy it the salesperson refused to sell it, saying that it was mispriced:(
My experiences at Montague Books have been better, although I don’t live in Brooklyn Heights anymore and as such rarely go there now.
As far as the Strand is concerned, forget it! I have been to the one on Broadway and the one on Fulton, and cannot find a thing amid the mess. Sure, they have a ton of books there (especially the Broadway one), but there is no organization, which is surprising as there always seems to be a large staff present. I suppose that if I spent all day there I could find something, but it’s just too much effort navigating through the winding rows, bumping elbows with people, scanning case after case of books I’m not interested in…
Now, if I want some cheap books, I just go to the sidewalk vendors near NYU on the south end of Washington Square Park. They have loads of fiction paperbacks, including all the classics, which are my favorites:)
There’s another pretty good used book store on 4th Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets… Alabaster Books, I think.
My mistake…I was on Montague Street yesterday, and I noticed that the store I’m talking about is called Heights Books, not Montague.
I agree with you about the Strand’s lack of organization, which is why I wouldn’t list it as one of my favorite stores, no matter how many miles of books they advertise. When I go there I usually stick to one or two sections…the case of Modern Library editions is always good for one or two out-of-print volumes at five dollars or less, and sometimes I go down to the basement and root through the review copies of new academic press books.