I'm not one for clever puns nor the mystery genre, so I found this first establishment not quite to my taste. For the face-pulsed adventure novelers, however, this is a perfect one-stop shop for all your book needs.
Guests will find the dimly-lit, low ceilinged room as shady as the subject matter and can expect to pay normal back-cover prices for all of the goods.
Being the sole customer on a Saturday afternoon, I politely browsed the shelves even though I knew nothing there was for me. All of the books were straightspined and in perfect order, which gave me the impression that I was the first person to ever remove the book from the shelf. Either I had forgotten what new books looked like, or that store hasn't seen very much business lately.
Booksmart
Don't blink or you'll miss it--Booksmart is locatable to the passerby by nothing more than a sidewalk sign. After entering a large establishment labeled "CHEAPO," bookseekers must turn left and head down a staircase past $1 bookshelves to find Booksmart.
Booksmart looked like an independent version of Half Price Books, but the prices were more like 3/4 the price. For a girl who treats a trip to Half Price as a special occasion, the $1-2 markup at Booksmart wasn't very appealing.
The atmosphere was very urban and relaxed. Band posters were on the windows and The Current was playing in the background--for a frequenter of Uptown, this would be nothing different than any other establishment.
There was a huge selection, even amongst the bestsellers. If wanted to, I could have bought a copy of Catching Fire for $9, which is something that you would never find at Half Price.
Something that this store does that would be extremely convenient to the recurring customer is that they have tables labeled "New since Thursday" "New since Friday" and "New since Saturday." Very handy.
I did leave this store with a purchase in hand--a copy of John Green's Looking for Alaska for $4.99!
Magers & Quinn
As soon as you walk through the front doors of Margers & Quinn, you know you've hit the Uptown hot spot. This bookstore is definitely not a hole-in-the-wall establishment, as any visitor can tell from their customized coffee mugs and tote bags in the entrance.
With rooms upon rooms upon rooms upon rooms of books of every genre, a visitor could get lost for hours. Whole aisles are dedicated to birds and insects and entire walls exhibit sub-genres like poetry and art books.
There were maybe fifty or sixty people in the entire store, which made sneaking a picture like the one below very difficult.
What I loved most about Magers & Quinn was the old-world elements like the sliding ladders and fifteen-foot shelves. What I loved least were the prices. Although many books are stickered at about half price, most popular/newer/interesting novels seemed to be priced at some sort of weird 10% discount. If a book's back cover price is $15, the Magers price would be $13.50. Definitely not compelling enough to even consider making a purchase.
There you have it! The top three bookstores from the West suburbs. Sometime soon, I hope to explore three bookshops in the East suberbs/St. Paul area. Stay tuned!
No comments:
Post a Comment