Rare Books Stores
A list of the coolest rare books shops around.
Argonaut Book Shop
Union Square - San Francisco, CA United StatesBetween the Gold Rush and the 1906 earthquake, the Mexican American War and the OJ trial, we say California has had more history than some centuries-old nations. Argonaut Book Shop is the unofficial keep of said history. The antiquarian book...
Arundel
Mid City/Beverly - Los Angeles, CA United StatesDo you really need a 150,000 square foot mega-bookstore to have something for everybody? Arundel Books proves that you don't. The store stocks new, used and rare books but does so in way as to not artificially bulk up their shelves with any...
Arundel
Downtown - Seattle, WA United StatesDo you really need a 150,000 square foot mega-bookstore to have something for everybody? Arundel Books proves that you don't. The store stocks new, used and rare books but does so in way as to not artificially bulk up their shelves with any...
Brattle Book Shop
Downtown - Boston, MA United StatesWhat would one of the oldest cities in America be without a nice used bookshop? Brattle Book Shop is not merely a nice shop, it is the oldest in the country, its proprietor Kenneth Glass an authority on antiquated books. Along with three levels...
Crawford Doyle
Upper East Side - New York, NY United StatesCrawford Doyle is the type of general-purpose bookstore that you might expect to have been put of out business by the national mega chains. But the feisty store has persevered by preserving a calm, sophisticated atmosphere. The store carries a...
DigModern
Online StoreYou can buy that original vintage table for a gazillion dollars or you can buy the plans for $50 and make one yourslef. Considering the plethora of shops out there selling vintage/mid-century modern furniture and objects, a shop that focuses on...
Equator Books
Abbot Kinney - Venice, CA United StatesEquator Books is one of the most beautiful bookstores you're likely to come across. The center of the tall, airy store includes a gallery wall featuring monthly exhibitions of original artwork. The gallery space is flanked on either side by...
Michael Thompson Books
Third Street - Los Angeles, CA United StatesAn old fashioned storefront in what has become a hectic fairway of furniture and fashion, Michael Thompson Books provides its customers a calm, comforting place to peruse rare and antiquarian books. Fashioned like a library, the warmly lit store...
Moe's Books
Telegraph - Berkeley, CA United StatesWhile a grand old piece of history itself, Moe's Books is a great steward of literary history as well. The four-storied bookstore is full of new, used and rare books. The used book section is the draw here. Lose yourself in the 100,000 or...
Mystery Pier Books
West Hollywood - West Hollywood, CA United StatesThe mystery in Mystery Pier Books could be referring as much to the narrow, dark passageway one must traverse to reach the shop than to the number of rare, first-edition mystery and crime novels inside. A humble landmark in the center of West...
Spoonbill & Sugartown
Williamsburg - Brooklyn, NY United StatesCompeting with superstores and online shops with impossibly large warehouses is useless if you're a small bookseller so Spoonbill & Sugartown did the only thing it could do: focus. Art and design in its many forms (film, photography,...
The Bookworks
Lakeview/Wrigleyville - Chicago, IL United StatesIn the shadow of historic Wrigley Fields, The Bookwooks offers other forms of history. Foremost are tens of thousands of books of the used and often rare variety with a focus on, what else, sports. Also around are bins of vinyl records, used CDs...
The Mysterious Bookshop
TriBeCa - New York, NY United StatesBook shops like this aren't supposed to exist anymore, certainly not in expensive Manhattan real estate, but here The Mysterious Bookshop is, selling an unequaled collection of new, used and rare mystery, suspense, crime and detective titles....
Elsewhere
Sites we dig
Sites
- Hint Mag
- IHT Style
- JC Report
- LA.com Shopping
- Men.Style.com
- NY Mag Fashion
- NY Times Fashion & Style
- Refinery 29
- Style.com
- Superfuture