We started at The Million Year Picnic in Harvard Square. Descending into this subterranean shop gave me the kind of thrill that I used to get hitting up Wooden Shoe Books on 20th St. in Philly as a young teenager. Maybe it was just the smell, but ol' AM and I spent a good half hour there checking out the minis, zines and indie books and we chatted about likes & loves from comictown. I picked up two Connected zines by Roger Whiting from 2002(!) and the third issue of Monty Comics by Kayla Escobedo.
We then moved on to Lorem Ipsum, the bookstore that now houses the Papercut Zine Library, sadly closed on the night of our visit. The place is big and airy, with a nice little children's section. I bet events there are super fun, but the book selection needs some perking up. I get the feeling that this is a newish store and will likely get better as more people know about it and bring them their books.
After talk of forgotten peanuts, tasty sandwiches and bored cops, Anzacmonster dropped me at Rodney's, a giant bookstore near The Middle East, and went home. Rodney's seems like a great place to wander with friends, check out nonfiction and buy either some bookshelves or some candy. The fiction section was large, but skewed towards older popular fiction. The short story collection section was a little more lively. I found the amazingly (and awesomely) 80s' Transactions in a Foreign Currency by Deborah Eisenberg and Third Class Superhero by Charles Yu. I haven't touched TCS yet, but I imagine it will be filled with fun stories that I will immediately forget. We shall see...
So the moral of this story is, if you have to go to Boston, meet up with a booky internet friend and force her to drive you from bookstore to bookstore until she has to go home.
What places did we miss?
3 comments:
Only a few. Lorem Ipsum is one of the best, and worth a second attempt. I'm glad it was on your list. Two more to add for when you come back: Across the river there's Brookline Booksmith (which is one of the more famous independent bookstores here), Boston Book Annex, and Trident Books on Newbury Street (extra points for the milkshakes served.).
Yeah, I think LI would be great for nonfiction, esp. political books, but it just wasn't my thing for fiction.
I hope those milkshakes can be made with soy!
We have folks in Brookline so I hope to head to the Booksmith one of these days.
Did I ever mention the New England Mobile Book Fair? The ginormous warehouse stuffed with books arranged by publisher? A little trek but worth seeing before it goes under.
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