Unlikely Glossary Project
Bookstores
Unlikely Glossary Project Bookstores Sub-Project
h3. Oakland, California
Walden Pond - Nick’s neighborhood bookstore when he inhabited the best-located apartment in the universe. It was across the street from this brilliant used book store with a large, interesting selection, good prices, and lots of dusty places to sit and read. Where Nick acquired many of his early sci-fi and fantasy readings-classic Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert, pedophilicious Piers Anthony, etc. On the same block as the divine Grand Lake Theater
Specatator—Nick’s neighborhood bookstore when he lived on Piedmont Ave. Across the street from the Piedmont Theater. Possessed tolerably good science fiction holdings (including a copy of Philip Jose Farmer’s pseudonymous Kilgore Trout novel, as well as Dirk Gently one and two, most of Orson Scott Card’s oeuvre (for Olivia), etc.), ecclectic straight-fic holdings (like, Dogs of God, not to mention a couple of Kay Boyle collections) good bargains on old new books, and a regularly inebriated but quite friendly staff. Many hours spent here.
Lakeshore WaldenBooks—Uninteresting except for its proximity to the Lakeshore Cheese Steak Shop
Bibliomania—Fascinating. Located on Telegraph around 19th st (the sort of place you expect to find wig shops (lots of wig shops), not bookstores. Especially not bookstores that have wierd-ass specialized collections, a wall of firsts…
The Bookmark—New find. Friends of the Oakland Library store. (And, therefore, no friends of mine, if they knew me. Visited once, acquired a Le Carre, a Robert Asprin “Myth” uncorrected proof, and a heretofore unheard-of-by-me Kay Boyle novel.
h3. Berkeley, California
Moe's - The definitive bookstore. Several floors of used and new books; very good prices on new books, fair prices on used trade and hardcover, and good prices on used paperbacks. Holdings vary according to subject-has fuckall in the way of education, for example, but reasonably good for philosophy and science fiction and excellent for lit and poetry.
Shakespeare Co.—Cheaper and much more random in its holdings than Moe’s, across the street form which it is located. Ends up with a lot of loose odds and ends, including the occasional collectible Sanskrit monograph and a delightful amount of New Wave sci-fi. Nick’s preferred source of Sturgeon and Zelazny. Also once offered a couple volumes of Van Buitenen’s Mahabharata.
The Other Change of Hobbit—Nerd central. Exclusively sells sci-fi, mystery, and horror; lots of signed copies of things, lots of obscure books, extremely qualified (and annoying) staff.
Cody's - Moe’s’s yuppie neighbor. Sells new books-good selection, comparable to a small Barnes and Noble or Borders, but without the corporate schtick. Often has amusing offerings in the marked-down section upstairs. Nick’s source (at last!) for the relatively unfindable and extremely insightful American Evasion of Philosophy by Cornel West.
Cartesian Books - Weird little place. Not sure what it’s deal is. Has minimal fiction holdings-mostly history, obscure nonfiction, and other randomness. However, of its about twenty volumes of science fiction the last time Nick was there, one was Herbert’s Eye, a wonderfully instructive collection. The place smells of cats and disease.
Pegasus Books—
Pendragon Books—Pegasus’s sister store
Berkeley BART WaldenBooks—Regular amusement zone for Nick while Renee worked a sandwhich stand nearby. Received first remembered papercut there from an oversized copy of a Dr. Seuss career-guidance book.
"Downtown Berkeley Barnes and Noble"—Normally, I’d be averse to listing this on principle, but this is where I acquired my copy of Quine’s Quiddities, and therefore is of special interest to the UgP, as Quiddities was a primary inspiration.
UC Berkeley University Press Books—Rather odd little place. Offers Harry Potter in a billion languages, which is nifty. Nick’s source of utterly-impossible-to-find Nagarjuna and the Philosophy of Openness by Nancy McCagney.
h2. San Francisco, California
Stacey's—I think this was the place; in any case, some downtown bookstore, where Olivia introduced Nick to (a) Wilfred Owen’s poetry and (b) Orson Scott Card’s short stories, both being delightful, the former obviously being the more significant as literature, the latter as cultural literacy.
Booksmith—I believe Olivia and I stopped in here at some point, though for the life of my I can’t think whether anything came of it, book-wise.
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h2. Hayward, California
The Book Shop—See CmR:TheBookShop
h2. Providence, Rhode Island
Myopic—The closest thing Providence has to a real bookstore. Okay selection, pretty random philosophy holdings. Obtained there: Alan Bloom’s translation of Emile, Philip Jose Farmer’s Wind Whales of Ishmael, and, shockingly, a two-volume Panini.
Atlas Bower—Not so much a bookstore as an indoor yardsale, this store was completely unpredictable and mostly crap, but it also provided Nick with Weil’s Lectures on Philosophy, Ballard’s stunning early collection The Voices of Time (first ed., I think), and Kierkegaard’s Works of Love (birthday gift from Andrew. It moved downtown sometime during 2004, or most of the way downtown, anyway.
College Hill Books—Somewhere between a bookstand and a bookstore, this place has a good selection of whatever’s brand new, along with quite a lot of magazines, but is definitely not the place to go if you’re looking for something in particular. Closed as of summer 2004, alas.
Brown Bookstore—Obviously, a prime source of textbooks, but not to be credited for that, as those are professor-chosen.
Borders—Unremarkable except for its odd tendency to file its philosophy texts next to its tarot cards and bargain music. Source of Nick’s copy of Weil’s Gravity and Grace
h2. Burlington, Vermont
North Country Books—The underground one, home of a pretty good scifi collection. Andrew lusts after the Dashiell Hammett there, and has picked up a few books on Eastern Europe.
Crow Bookstore—Source of Andrew’s only book on Slovak, and his only book on Russian. Andrew lusts after but will probably never get, let alone read, Quine’s Word and Object here. [MUCH LATER EDIT: HA! I BOUGHT IT THERE OVER A YEAR AGO! And…um…have started reading it a couple of times. -A, 8/05]
h2. [Ithaca, NY]]
Bookstore whose name I don't remember—Not a great bookstore, but has one truly remarkable quality: it supplied Nick with his little “New Directions Bibelots” copy of Kay Boyle’s The Crazy Hunter, which almost certainly would never have entered his life if it hadn’t been shaped funny and looked interesting.
h2. See also:
Libraries
TODO: Tidy up the markup, add new stores
