As Groucho Marx once said, outside of a dog, books are man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
So assuming everyone on your holiday gift list is outside of a dog, you may want to start spreading a little Christmas cheer by putting some pretty ribbons on books and doling them out to everyone you know, love, or just kinda like. Or just go buy yourself a stack of reading material and ignore your family over the holidays.
If for some reason you don’t feel like supporting Amazon, or you just want to live in a world where independent bookstores still thrive, here is a list of some of the best independent bookstores around, mostly chosen by the book-loving nerds at Fast Company. These stores don’t own Whole Foods, or share an owner with the Washington Post, or trade in face-recogntition technology (that we know of), but they do sell books:
- Elliott Bay, Seattle
- Marcus Books, Oakland and San Francisco
- Three Lives & Co., New York City
- Word, Brooklyn, New York, and Jersey City, New Jersey
- The Book Mill, Montague, Massachusetts
- Politics and Prose, Washington, D.C.
- Common Language, Ann Arbor, Michigan
- Rizzoli, New York City
- Porter Square Books, Cambridge, Massachusetts
- Murder on the Beach, Delray Beach, Florida
- Bluestockings, New York City
- Malaprop’s, Asheville, North Carolina
- A Cappella Books, Atlanta
- Powell’s, Portland, Oregon
- Women and Children First, Chicago
- Book Passage, San Francisco and Sausalito, California
- Lighthouse Books, St. Petersburg, Florida
- Last Word, Philadelphia
- Octavia Books, New Orleans
- Twice Sold Tales, Seattle
- Dashwood, New York City
- Kramerbooks, Washington, D.C.
- Brain Lair Books, South Bend, Indiana
- Moe’s Books, Berkeley, California
- Boswell, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
- Books Are Magic, Brooklyn, New York
- Wild Rumpus Books, Minneapolis
- Charis Books & More, Atlanta
- The Strand, New York City
- Avid Bookshop, Athens, Georgia
- The Spiral Bookcase, Philadelphia
- Changing Hands, Phoenix
- Malvern Books, Austin
- Writer’s Block Las Vegas
- Quimby’s, Chicago
- John K. King Books, Detroit
- Dickson Street Bookshop, Fayetteville, Arkansas
- The Last Bookstore, Los Angeles
- Books on Broad, Camden, South Carolina
- Back in the Day Books, Dunedin, Florida
- Pages Bookshop, Detroit
- Vroman’s, Pasadena, California
- Print Bookstore, Portland, Maine
- Square Books, Oxford, Mississippi
- Skylight Books, Los Angeles
- Prairie Lights, Iowa City
- Country Bookshelf, Bozeman, Montana
- Book People, Austin
- Faulkner House, New Orleans
- Left Bank, St. Louis
- Parnassus, Nashville
- Inquiring Minds Bookstore, Saugerties and New Paltz, New York
- Half Price Books, Austin
- Off the Beaten Path, Steamboat, Colorado
- Tattered Cover, Denver
- The Raven Book Store, Lawrence, Kansas
- Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Lexington, Kentucky
- The Ivy Bookshop, Baltimore
- Milkweed, Minneapolis
- Water Street Bookstore, Exeter, New Hampshire
- McNally Jackson, New York City
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