obviously The Back Page is more club biased than Sports Pages ever was but away from the very front of the shop and the TV screen playing what seems to be a virtual loop of videos of our seasons under KK theres a range of goods to satisfy anybody interested in the literary paraphenalia of football...
backpagenewcastle.com/User/ProductsDetail.asp?ProdId=7231 - 34k -

Same as everyone else in London really, the University waterstones, Daunts, Stamfords, Foyles. I used to love Murder One but the new shop is a bit weird. The Oxfam on Marylebone High Street is particularly good too. Grant and Cutler for them as have more money than they know what to do with.

Bristol is home to one of the other Stanfords in the UK (London, Manchester and here being the only ones), and it's also lovely, if not as big as the ones in Manchester or London.

Foyles is wonderful (I'm probably too young to remember it when it was really good), and there are some places in Madrid, which is full of bookshops, that would be fantastic if the people providing the customer service weren't, well, Spanish.

There's a place in Buenos Aires, just a block south of the Plaza de Mayo, which is absolutely enchanting. But I can't remember the name...

SamLKelly wrote:

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Bristol is home to one of the other Stanfords in the UK (London, Manchester and here being the only ones), and it's also lovely, if not as big as the ones in Manchester or London.

Alas, the Manchester Stanfords closed last year.

Did it? Bastards!

Moe's Books in Berkeley is brilliant. Quite a history, too:

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Since its inception back in the heyday of the Beatnik era, Moe's Books has managed to become more than just a great bookstore--it has achieved the rarified status of a beloved landmark institution as well. Situated just four blocks from the University of California campus, Moe's has managed to mirror the often turbulent and triumphant times that have come to epitomize all that is exciting and unique about Berkeley.

Founded in 1959 by Moe Moskowitz and his wife Barbara, the original site of the store was a small shop on Shattuck just north of University Avenue. As the early 60s dawned, Moe moved his expanding operation to Telegraph Avenue, closer in to the hub of the UC campus. By that time UC Berkeley was about to explode into the national limelight as the focal point of the burgeoning Free Speech Movement. As the decade lunged forward and the Viet Nam War raged on, Moe's Books found itself at the center of numerous confrontations with the Berkeley police and the National Guard. When local authorities called for city-wide curfews, Moe refused to close his doors, asserting that people should be free to walk the streets. When an occasional tear gas canister would roll down the sidewalk, many protesters sought refuge in Moe's Books--one of the few safe havens willing to remain open during a time fraught with imminent danger. Clearly this was a revolutionary period in our history that defied comparison, and Moe's Books under the fearless leadership of Moe Moskowitz, led by shining example.

Moe Moskowitz began a revolution of his own, one that altered the landscape of the used book business. By simply assigning specific values to mass market paperbacks and trade softcover books, customers would now know exactly what rate of exchange they would be receiving. Before this, most used bookstores would literally buy by the pound, giving little or no value for the books they took. Today, the percentages are virtually the same as when Moe worked them out over forty years ago. Moe's was also one of the earliest online bookstores, with its Art and Antiquarian department (More Moe's on the 4th floor, specializing in books on the fine and applied arts) establishing a prominent presence on the internet back in the early 90s. Gradually, as the very nature of the book business has changed, Moe's has seen fit to radically readjust its sights. With many long-time independent bookstores falling by the wayside, Moe's continues to blaze new trails into the twenty-first century, providing book lovers not only in the Bay Area, but now all over the world, an opportunity to shop one of the country's finest bookstores.

Moe's Books is in the same building on Telegraph Avenue that was built for it some thirty years ago. On any given day, its four floors hold upwards to two hundred thousand books in all subjects, from time-worn classics to the most scarce and desirable rarities, from vintage sheet music to collectable paperbacks and highly sought after pulp magazines--virtually anything can be found at Moe's Books.

Gramsci's choice of Powell's Books is also spot-on. I love stores that offer used and new, and their online offering is also great, with discounts almost as good as Amazon for some titles (and the bonus is you're not killing real bookstores by buying from them).

The Seminary Co-Op at the University of Chicago, in the basement of the Chicago Theological Seminary, has the largest selection of academic books in the country. Essential for me.

Man, it's been 15 years since I've been in Moe's. Good shout, goldstone.

I don't think that I ever walked into Moe's without walking out with at least one thing I hadn't thought of buying before I crossed the threshold.

I'm not sure that a higher recommendation is possible, but don't go in if you have to be somewhere else in an hour.

Can I gently encourage everyone to boycott Waterstone's (specifically at London Uni, my ex-workplace).

I left in November 2007, but the cnuts have spent the last five months claiming wrongly that I owe them £850. They did admit verbally a month ago that it was ballicks, but can't be arsed to send a two line letter confirming this.

Ta.

I'll boycott them until I next see you use the phrase "Southern Ireland", deal?

Moe's is great, especially the rare books at the top floor.

Cody's just up the street was nearly as good, great magazine section and one of the best author lecture series anywhere. Unfortunately they closed there, but their expansion stores in west berkeley and downtown SF are still around.

Shakespeare's further up the street is the best-smelling used book store in town, it's got a little bit of dust and high stacks of books with just a hint of house of cards feel to the old tall wooden shelves. They have a branch in Paris too.

Most of my books purchased in Berkeley though came from Pegasus bookstore, which had a lot of good pre-editions and quality overstook.

Builders Booksource is a relatively smaller store which specializes in architecture, design and art books.

Berkeley also has a fabulous graphic novels store, Comic Relief, that is to the genre what Cody's is to books in general. Some of the best artists live in the city, and they often browse there and hold signings. Unfortunately, its longtime owner, a great person who also was a Berkeley fixture, passed away recently.

It's kind fo amazing that Berkeley, a city of 100,000, cumulatively has better bookstores than all of NYC (pop. 8M) It also has much better wine stores than NYC and its music stores are as good as the Big Apple's. The food is also better.

There are some good stores across the bay in San Francisco, like Green Apple and Adobe. a couple of years ago, a local artist and the owners of Adobe completely rearanged the entire 20,000 book inventory by the color of their spines in a really neat art project, that was quite a sight:



The best place for bookstores might well be Montreal though. It's got a pretty decent set of english-language bookstores. Many small independent second-hand ones. What makes it a fantastic place though is that it has as deep a bookstore array in french-language stores. If you enjoy both cultural sources, it makes for an amazing selection of print offerings.

Noj used to live in the small and out-of-the-way village of Cromford at the edge of the Peak District. (It's not exactly an unknown place as you can make a strong case for it being the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution). Anyway, this backwater was blessed (is blessed) with one of those great labyrinthine labour-of-love second hand bookshops. Scarthin Books. Fantastic place.

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I'll boycott them until I next see you use the phrase "Southern Ireland", deal?

Deal duly agreed, professor. (They did eventually send me a confirmation of no money owed after I raked the payroll office in Solihull town centre with semi-automatic fire. Caused £10 million of improvements etc. etc.).

Ooh, I hadn't heard of Stanford's - just looked online and it looks brill-skills. And I wish I'd known about that sports books shop last time I was in Newcastle.

Mostly I just use LB Camden libraries.

Excellent call re: the extraordinary Scarthin Books, Ad Hoc, although Reed's earlier point about that type of place being a fire hazard surely must apply.