Where to Buy Books
A roundup of the best places to scratch your reading itch
About Books
A fire burned through the laundromat’s eastern wall, which was also the western wall of the bookstore. “Everyone thinks they can own a bookstore,” my mom said, years later. The fire rang a death-knell for About Books. When I’m feeling pretentious, that’s where I tell people I grew up.
My mom taught me from very young to love books — books of any breed. She read to me and my brother every night before bed, and I can still hear our chorusing for another chapter, and the coy way she always gave in.
There are good places to buy books and bad. You know this.
Shop Local
Your first choices should be local businesses. I’m lucky to live in a liberal haven that supports numerous joints like these. If you’re ever in Providence, check out:
Books on the Square, Angell St
Riff-Raff - they sell drinks too! - Valley St
Twenty Stories, Ives St
Symposium Books, Westminster St
Paper Nautilus, specialty used bookstore, Angell St
Local businesses support local people. They give neighborhoods character and walkability. They create nuclei for community events. They also benefit your city through taxes. As I learned from About Books, it’s hard owning a bookstore: the products are heavy and expensive to ship, the clientele are fickle, the competition is heartless, and the margins are comically thin.
I don’t leave my house every day, though. And when I do, just about the only place I go is work. None of those wonderful bookstores above live on the streets between home and work, so I don’t always get out to them. I often, then, go for online purchases.
Online Options
Bookshop supports indy bookstores by donating profits from sales to participating indy bookstores. You can target specific stores you love, or have the profit of your purchases enter a pool benefitting all indy bookstores in their network. No, it’s not as cheap as Amazon, but they do have free shipping sales often.
Thriftbooks is the greatest website on the internet. Okay, probably not, but it is excellent. Like Bookshop, the website fosters community and financial support for indy booksellers, but specialized in used books. And they are cheap. I have bought dozens of used books from them and never been disappointed with the quality, either. Besides, there’s something shamanistic about opening a book in which a stranger highlighted, dogeared, underlined and annotated.
The Best Option
I’ve saved the best choice for last: libraries. Rhode Island has a phenomenal, statewide library system. If you have the misfortune of living in some other state, though, I’m sure you have a robust and wonderful community library. And, did you know that by using your local library, you’re directly benefiting them? Policymakers use data such as active library cards, check outs, and visits to determine how much funding libraries get. Plus, maybe this is obvious, you’re already paying for these books anyway.
Awww...About Books 🩵📚. I remember when a biker drove up, looked at the sign on the store and said “Adult Books?”