Bookstore Visits
I have never been to a city I did not try to find a bookstore in.
Not because I needed something to read. Because a bookstore tells you something about a place that no guidebook, no restaurant, and no monument can. It tells you what the people who live there are thinking about. What they are curious about. What kind of stories they carry home at the end of the day.
This page collects the ones worth visiting. Each entry comes from a personal visit — a door I pushed open, a section that stopped me, a conversation with the person behind the counter. No lists borrowed from other websites. Just the ones I have seen with my own eyes.
Come back often. The list grows every time I travel.
The Notting Hill Bookshop
London, United Kingdom
There are bookstores you visit because they are famous. And then there are bookstores that earn their fame while you are standing inside them.
The Notting Hill Bookshop on Blenheim Crescent stops you before you even get through the door — literally. On the afternoon I visited, the queue outside told its own story. New visitors waited until someone left before stepping in. In a world of empty retail and distracted browsing, a bookstore managing its own crowd is a quiet statement about what it has built.
Inside, classic shelving runs floor to ceiling — no empty space, just books chosen with conviction. The selection is broad and considered.
The movie connection is real, but the store does not need the film. It was here before it and will be here long after.
Address: 13 Blenheim Crescent, London, W11 2EE, England
The Book & Cover
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Some bookstores announce themselves loudly. The Book & Cover in Chattanooga does the opposite — it earns your attention quietly, the way the best books do.
I found them on Instagram before I ever walked through the door, which felt appropriate for a store that understands how readers find things today. Then I drove two hours to see it for myself.
The travel section is focused, which means everything in it was chosen deliberately. That is the kind of curation that tells you something about the person behind the counter. The owner knows her neighborhood, knows her readers, and knows exactly what belongs on her shelves and what does not.
If you find yourself in Chattanooga — and you should, it is a city worth the detour — walk in.
Address: 1310 Hanover Street, Chattanooga, TN 37405, USA
Hatchards at Piccadilly
London, United Kingdom
Some bookstores sell books. Hatchards on Piccadilly has been doing something more than that since 1797.
Walking through that door in December felt like stepping into a different century. The carpet underfoot, the staircase lined with books climbing toward the upper floors, the quiet reverence of people who came not to browse but to appreciate.
You half expect to turn a corner and find Charles Dickens at a table, pen in hand, surrounded by an expectant crowd. The feeling is not nostalgia — it is continuity. This place has been here through everything and has no intention of changing.
The window display on the afternoon I visited was dressed for Paddington — warm, whimsical, and perfectly at home in a store that has championed British storytelling for more than two centuries.
Hatchards does not need to announce itself. It simply endures.
Address: 187 Piccadilly, London, W1J 9LE, England
www.hatchards.co.uk
Hemlock Bazaar
Ellijay, Georgia
Some bookstores ask you to browse and leave. Hemlock Bazaar in the heart of downtown Ellijay invites you to stay.
Walk through the door and the choice is immediate — coffee first, or books. The answer, as any regular visitor will tell you, is both. The shelves are well stocked and the seating is generous, the kind of comfortable that makes an hour disappear without apology. There are records too, for the kind of browser who likes their discoveries in more than one format.
Ellijay is worth the drive from Atlanta on its own terms — apple orchards, mountain air, a downtown that still has its character intact. Hemlock Bazaar is the reason to linger once you get there. It is the kind of place where locals read, writers write, and strangers become regulars faster than they expected.
I have done some of my best writing here.
131 N Main St Unit 2, Ellijay, GA 30540, USA
Booklink Tampa International Airport,
Terminal E — Tampa, Florida
Not every great bookstore has a street address.
Booklink in Terminal E at Tampa International Airport does what the best airport bookstores do — it reminds you, at exactly the right moment, that a journey is best taken with a book in hand. The space is open and well lit, the kind of environment that invites you to slow down even when the departures board is telling you otherwise.
What impressed me most was the presentation. Books displayed on tables and shelves with care and intention — genres well represented, titles accessible, nothing buried or overlooked. Someone thought carefully about how a traveler moves through this space and what she might be looking for before boarding.
For a store measured in gate proximity rather than square footage, Booklink earns its place on this list.
Tampa International Airport, Terminal E, Tampa, Florida
www.tampainternational.com
