How to Find the Best Bookstores in London
London boasts better bookstores than most cities, but even so, independent shops remain threatened. So if you don't want to get stuck at yet another cookie-cutter bookstore, poke your nose into some of these fabulously dusty, many decades-old independent treasures. With one whiff, your nose will tell you you're in the right place.
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Instructions
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Start with good maps, both of the city and of the tube. If you don't know your way around, it will be impossible to find these places. If you are visiting London for the first time, make sure you understand the tube (subway) system. It's your best way to get around the city.
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Go to some of the funkier parts of town, away from the tourist traps (Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, etc.). Go where the locals go and, like in San Francisco's Haight or New York's Greenwich Village, you'll tap into some treasured publishing stalwarts. That said, nearly every neighborhood in Blighty has a great bookstore if you keep your nose primed to the whiff of antiquated editions of "Huckleberry Finn" and "Macbeth" (see Resources below).
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Poke your nose into any pub in any neighborhood and, unlike in the States, most of the people there will have an opinion about where to find a good bookstore. Londoners would laugh at this assertion, but truly, if you throw a stone up in the air at the average pub in the city, it will more than likely land on a highly literate person. The UK has one of the highest literacy rates in the world, nearly 100 percent. Take a trip on the tube during rush hour and people are actually reading books, not just listening to their iPods.
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Avoid the chain booksellers. They are everywhere, beginning as you disembark at Heathrow. If you must go to a chain, visit W.H. Smith, which will carry the latest novels from the States as as airplane-reading treasures not as readily found in America, such as "Is it Me or Is Everything Shit?" by Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur and "Watching the English" by Kate Fox. W.H. Smith, like Borders and other chains in the city, will also carry a host of classics, magazines and doo-dads to satiate your every scholarly need.
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