Bookstores in the Stanford area

Mostly used bookstores, of course. (I know what my visitors like.) [Update: many of these stores have since gone out of business since this list was compiled in 2000-2001. Listings are retained for historical interest.]

On Campus

Stanford Bookstore
White Plaza, 650-329-1217
Sells new books and textbooks. Has the supreme advantage of being right on campus and very near the Law School. Small but surprisingly good sf/fantasy section. Large litcrit section has virtually no fantasy criticism, however. Best travel book section of any local store, even better than the travel specialty shops.
Not to be confused with the Stanford Bookstore Palo Alto (135 University Avenue), whose stock is basically limited to textbooks for the university's medical, business, and engineering schools.

Mayfield

or the California Street business district, the nearest shopping district to Stanford, and (by extension) all of south Palo Alto. All addresses here are Palo Alto.

Know Knew Books
415 California Ave. (at Ash St.), 650-326-9355
Not as cutesy as the name sounds, this is an unexciting but basic solid used bookstore on the main business street.

Future Fantasy Bookstore
3705 El Camino Real (several blocks south, between Matadero and Curtner), 650-855-9771
I only put this one on the list to warn you off it. A truly pathetic excuse for a specialty SF/fantasy store. Go to Dark Carnival in Berkeley. [Update: Future Fantasy went out of business in June 2001. The death of any bookstore diminishes me, but this diminished me less than most.]

Palo Alto (downtown)

Bell's Bookstore
536 Emerson St. (near University Ave.), 650-323-7822
For many years this was a dusty rathole owned by a suspicious old geezer who would trail every customer around the shop, enquring after the reasons for their interest in every book they picked up. Since, unsurprisingly, he didn't get many customers, this wasn't difficult for him to do. Fortunately, some years ago it was sold, thoroughly dusted, and is now a quite pleasant as well as extensive general shop. This is where I found W.H. Lewis's The Sunset of the Splendid Century.

Megabooks
444 University Ave. (at Kipling St.), 650-326-4730
An ordinary shop with mostly light popular reading, much of it paperback, but I've occasionally bought books here. For instance, my Swedish-English dictionary came from here, so you never know what you might find.

Renaissance Books, a funky little place specializing in 1960s/70s paperback fiction, no longer has a store but still sells books from a web site. They were located on Hamilton Avenue, a block away from the former site of the great and much-missed antiquarian bookseller William P. Wreden. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Stacey's has also disappeared from downtown Palo Alto effective early 2001, driven out by the rents. The San Francisco main outlet of this great store for new books (581 Market Street, near Second) is still in business.

Not a bookstore, but a really notable establishment in downtown Palo Alto is the Stanford Theatre (221 University Ave., 650-324-3700), a restored movie house owned by David Packard (son of the late co-founder of Hewlett Packard), which shows only old movies -- specializing in films of the 1930s and 40s -- just because that's what the owner likes. Has probably shown Casablanca more often than any other theatre in the world. Has frequent festivals: Bogart festivals, Hitchcock festivals, a George Bernard Shaw film festival. Its screenings are often packed.

Menlo Park

Wessex Books and Records
558 Santa Cruz Ave. (at El Camino Real), 650-321-1333
My favorite local used bookstore. Good general stock of modern books; the crown jewel is a huge selection of modern mainstream literature, in alphabetical order by author on the walls of the large back room. Although there's a separate SF section (rather small), some of the less obvious books by and about the Inklings may be found in this general literature section, usually in fair numbers. I bought, for instance, my copies of all the standard books about Charles Williams here, of which more copies had appeared by my next visit, leading me to suspect the owner has backup copies of much of his stock. Dwindling selection of classical LPs. [Now out of business - 6/05]

Feldman's Books
1170 El Camino Real (just north of Santa Cruz Ave.), 650-326-5300
A large rambling place with an eclectic selection, including both hardcovers and paperbacks in a variety of conditions. Some of my visitors like this place better than Wessex.

Kepler's Books
1010 El Camino Real (between Santa Cruz and Ravenswood), 650-324-4321
The top independent new bookstore on the Peninsula. Basically right across the street from Wessex and a block from Feldman's, and well worth visiting on the same trip. Keeps good current SF/fantasy and children's book sections, as well as a lot of other stuff: always my first stop to verify nominees when I was running the Mythopoeic Awards. [Has gone drastically downhill since this was written, and closed briefly in late 2005. I no longer recommend this store]

The Book Rack
865 Santa Cruz Ave. (near Crane St.), 650-323-3877
Used paperbacks. If you want romance novels, this is the place to go.

Some other worthwhile stores in Silicon Valley

Chimera Books and Music
1051 Middlefield Rd. (at Main St.), Redwood City, 650-701-0611
Formerly located in downtown Palo Alto, and now about five miles north. Specializes in travel books and poetry, but its real highlight is the extensive and high quality selection of used classical CDs. I own more used CDs bought at Chimera than everywhere else put together. [Now out of business]

Szwede Slavic Books
1629 Main St., Redwood City, 650-780-0966
Another refugee from Palo Alto, this is the place to go if you want books in Russian, Polish, or Czech, or in English about the countries from which those languages hail.

BookBuyers
317 Castro St. (near Dana), Mountain View, 650-968-7323
It's huge, the buyers will take virtually anything, and it's surprisingly good. Especially notable for paperback SF and non-fiction (with a special section of vintage pbs), books on fabric handicrafts, remaindered calendars, and a lot of cheap musical CDs, classical and otherwise.

Books Inc.
301 Castro St. (at Dana), Mountain View, 650-428-1234
California's local Borders wanna-be, Books Inc. has several stores selling new books around the Bay Area. While it doesn't have the panache or depth of the great independent booksellers of the past, it's a good comfort store to browse in. This outlet is just a few doors down from BookBuyers.

Linden Tree
170 State St. (at Third), Los Altos, 650-949-3390
A first-rate children's bookstore (who else in the U.S. stocks Enid Blyton?) that unfortunately keeps rather limited hours. And a few blocks away is

The Book Nest
366 Second St. (at San Antonio Ave.), Los Altos, 650-948-4724
Converted house with a nondescript but pleasant collection, and several cats.

Curious Bookshop
23 E. Main St., Los Gatos, 408-354-5560
Located on the east side of the freeway, where Main St. becomes Los Gatos Blvd. Mostly recent hardcovers, but there's a large selection of old Oz books in a display case.

Big Al's Record Barn
522 S. Bascom Ave. (near San Carlos St.), San Jose, 408-294-7200
If you've ever wondered where those old LP's of 1950s-1970s popular music -- of all kinds that you'd have found in a general record store in those days -- went, they're here. All of them. Reasonable prices, too.

Recycle Bookstore
1066 The Alameda (at Race St.), San Jose, 408-286-6275
Once the best store anywhere for used SF paperbacks, Recycle fell upon hard times for several years, but it's slowly recovering. About a block from Odyssey, about a mile west of downtown. (If you're coming from downtown to Odyssey or Recycle, take Santa Clara St.)

Odyssey Books
1435 The Alameda, San Jose, 408-293-7175
A bit of San Francisco-style literaria in San Jose. [Now out of business - 6/04]

Woodruff & Thrush
81 E. San Fernando (at 3rd St.), San Jose, 408-294-3768
An absolute rathole. Huge, disorganized, and dusty. I've seen worse, but only in Milwaukee. Worth venturing into (with gun and camera) if you happen to be in downtown San Jose anyway. [Now out of business - 6/04]

Berkeley

deserves a chapter to itself. The first three stores are cheek-by-jowl in the South Campus shopping district immediately adjacent to the U.C. campus, focusing on Telegraph Avenue. These four blocks of Telegraph are the heart of old Berkeley. As Merry said of the Withywindle, it's the place where all the queerness comes from.

Moe's Books
2476 Telegraph Ave. (near Dwight), 510-849-9938
Moe, a bald cigar-chomper who would stomp on open boxes of paperbacks on the floor so that he could reach the top shelves to cram more paperbacks in, transferred to the great bookstore in the sky a few years ago, and the shop has lost a bit of its flavor (which was more than Moe's cigars), but it's still four floors of Berkeley's flagship used bookstore, with a separate antiquarian shop on the top floor. And part of its appeal is the colorful Telegraph Avenue surroundings, including the two other great bookstores a few steps away:

Shakespeare & Co.
2499 Telegraph Ave., 510-841-8916
Almost directly across the street from Moe's, and lives rather in its shadow; and

Cody's
2454 Telegraph Ave. (at Haste St.), 510-845-7852
The best new bookstore anywhere that I know of, period. The selection is awesome, not so much for its size (though Cody's is big) but for its intelligence and imagination. The front display tables are always full of fascinating new books you'll never see anywhere else. Half a block from Moe's. There's a branch at 1730 Fourth St. in Berkeley (510-559-9500), almost as large and just as enticing, in a slightly less congested, definitely less funky location.

The Other Change of Hobbit
2020 Shattuck Ave. (at University Ave., in downtown), 510-848-0413
Ten to twenty years ago, this was the best SF specialty store around, but alas it's not quite what it used to be. Well worth dropping in on if you're in downtown Berkeley. Mostly new books, with a good shelf of used paperbacks and some collector's books, most of the latter not on display.

Black Oak Books
1491 Shattuck Ave. (at Vine St.), 510-486-0698
Uh-oh. I have friends who avoid North Shattuck altogether, for fear that they can't resist going in to Black Oak and spending way too much money. Rather overpriced, actually, but still very good. Has some new and some antiquarian books, but mostly used stock of academic bent. Located in the "gourmet ghetto" of North Berkeley.

Serendipity Books
1201 University Ave. (east of San Pablo Ave.), 510-841-7455
A disorganized mess, too large and airy to deserve the term rathole, with a stereotypically obnoxious owner but a lot of great old books. This is the place that got most of William P. Wreden's stock when he retired. I filled out a lot of my Dunsany collection here. Located in the flatlands of west Berkeley.

Dark Carnival
3086 Claremont Ave. (south of Ashby), 510-654-7323
Third one's the charm: this is the best SF specialty store in the Bay Area. Not only do they keep on top of all the new books, but the coverage is broad and deep. The store's cramped byways are full of tiny little sub-specialty alcoves, and while there aren't a lot of used books, the selection of obscure, imported, and new out-of-print books is awesome. There are dozens of Daniel Pinkwater books. There are still copies of Philip K. Dick's otherwise impossible to find children's book, and a huge stack of the long-OP Newcastle reprint edition of Dunsany's Fifty-One Tales. That sort of thing. Located in southeast Berkeley, in a neighborhood that actually has occasional parking spaces. To get here from Telegraph or downtown without a car, take the 7 bus.

Turtle Island Booksellers
3032 Claremont Ave., 510-655-3413
Scholarly bookstore oriented towards books on the arts and linguistics. I haven't been in their new store, near Dark Carnival, but the old one downtown was large, bright, and echoing, with the feeling of a converted artist's studio.

Other favorite stores elsewhere in the Bay Area

(from south to north)

BookBuyers Monterey
600 Lighthouse Ave. (at Hoffman), Monterey, 831-375-4208
A pleasant shop in New Monterey, two blocks from Cannery Row and close to the fabulous Monterey Bay Aquarium, this is my favorite store in the Monterey area. Formerly independently owned (and originally located in downtown Salinas, a city now without any bookstores worth mentioning), it's now a branch of the fine BookBuyers store in Mountain View, listed above.

Logos Books
1117 Pacific Ave. (at Lincoln St.), Santa Cruz, 831-427-5100
The heart of Santa Cruz, geographically and culturally. A large store with a basement and an elevator, it's filled with the sort of books you'd expect people in Santa Cruz to be reading: eastern philosophy, gonzo/paranoid litcrit, etc. There's a good new bookstore, Bookshop Santa Cruz, a few blocks up the street at 1520 Pacific, too.

The Literary Guillotine
204 Locust St. (at Cedar), Santa Cruz, 831-457-1195
Tiny cramped place, packed to the brim with university press books and other learned works, especially social science. For thin scholars only (nobody else can fit in the aisles).

Acorn Books
1436 Polk St. (near California St.), San Francisco, 415-563-1736
Green Apple Books
506 Clement St. (near 6th Ave.), San Francisco, 415-387-2272
San Francisco is full of good used bookstores of all kinds. These are just two of many, but they're two I reflexively stop into whenever I'm in the neighborhood. Acorn (just east of Van Ness Avenue, west of downtown) is a clean neat shop with antiquarian leanings; Green Apple (a few blocks north of the east part of Golden Gate Park) is an eclectic jumble with a separate music room.

Borderlands Books
866 Valencia St. (near 20th St.), San Francisco, 415-824-8203
Deserves mention as The City's current star science-fiction/fantasy specialty store. Carries both new and used books. The stock is small, but in new books it's particularly selective, so it's a useful place to visit to browse just the good stuff. Holds occasional literary discussion panels. It's located in the heart of the Mission District, which means 1) that some people may be nervous about visiting the neighborhood, and 2) there is no parking. None. Don't even think about it.

Gray Wolf Books
14595 E. 14th St., San Leandro, 510-483-4163
San Leandro is an East Bay suburb, and most of the books in the city are probably here. It's a giant place, a warehouse filled with abandoned review copies, remainders, and books that were abandoned review copies and remainders when they arrived, mumbledy-mumble years ago. You'll need a car to get here.

Bonanza Street Books
1605 Bonanza St., Walnut Creek, 925-932-2466
A large sunny store with a coffee bar and a great selection of new and used books, particularly good in history.

Vicarious Experience Used Books
60 W Sierra Ave., Cotati, 707-795-6457
A tiny cramped little place, with a lot of unusual stock because it's out of the way. I once found the original paperback of Harlan Ellison's The Glass Teat here, at a bargain price. The store keeps limited hours, but I like to stop by when I'm in the area. Cotati is a small town north of San Francisco on US 101, worth driving through anyway because of its unusual layout: instead of a grid, the streets are shaped in a hexagon. I am not making this up. The store is on the SW radial, just out from the central plaza.

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