All in Bookshop Review
58 Warren Street, New York, NY
If you love mysteries, hardboiled detectives, noir, Sherlock Holmes, pulp novels, or police procedurals, this is your ideal shop. It’s just one room, but it’s a big room, with books shelved floor to ceiling and piled on tables and turning racks in between. With leather sofas for reading and helpful staff willing to climb ladders to get those out-of-reach gems, this specialized shop is a great place to browse and a lot of fun to visit.
112 4th Avenue, New York, NY
Just around the corner from the famous Strand bookshop is another store of near equal quality—although not equal quantity, not by a long shot. Even a lot of Manhattanites I’ve spoken to have never visited this “little shop that could,” and I always tell them that the Alabaster Bookstore should be on everyone’s hit list.
828 Broadway, New York, NY
The idea of writing a review of Strand feels almost silly, as its reputation precedes itself quite well. And telling New York City bookworms about Strand is like telling Michael Jordan about basketball, but it’s an absolute pleasure to bring out-of-town book lovers into Strand and watch their eyes pop as they stare agog at the multi-floor beauty waiting for them within, or at the racks and racks of dollar books lining the sidewalk outside. This is my favorite place to browse for books. You can kill half a day here if you wanted to and never get bored, and I can’t remember a time when I didn’t leave the shop without a purchase.
1475 Western Ave., Albany, NY
The Book House will always have a special place in my heart because I bought my first book of poetry there, back in the spring of 2005, and it changed my life, giving me a creative outlet I never had before. For a long time I wasn’t able to return because I had moved away, but when I came back to the Albany area in 2015, I headed here and still stop by a few times a year. To say it’s located in the center of a strip mall is a bit deceiving unless you know Stuyvesant Plaza, which is home to a series of specialized and upscale clothing and gift shops, cafes and fine dining, plus a Chipotle, a TGI Fridays, that kind of stuff, basically the kind of strip mall an upper-middle class suburbanite would frequent. The only reason why I go there is The Book House, and this shop is worth the trip, especially if you're a local.
296 Hudson Ave., Albany, NY
The word that kept coming to mind as I moved slowly through this bookshop was thorough. From the expansive history and fiction shelves to the impressive literary memoir, biography, criticism section, this shop contained some of the most comprehensive subsections I’ve seen for something its size. And while it’s not large, it will easily draw you in for hours.
874 Route 43, Stephentown, NY
Tucked away in the rolling hills of eastern New York, just minutes from the Massachusetts border, you’ll find a little bastion of books with a healthy nod to Beat writers and peaceniks, not to mention plenty of piles to sort through. In between photos of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, a wandering shop cat, and various quotes lining the walls, you’ll find books stuck into every nook and cranny of this small but surprising bookshop.
128 Jay Street, Schenectady, NY
I’ll say this about The Open Door Bookstore—it sets the bar very high. From the first moment I walked inside, I realized that this is the kind of bookshop I’d call a “standard bearer,” especially for independent bookshops that specialize in new books. You walk in see all those displays of bestsellers, hardcovers, pristine paperbacks, and you smell that smell, of ink, paper, and binding, walk the clean orderly aisles. This is where you can spend an afternoon and lose yourself looking for that lucky book or two (or six?) that you plan to take home.
16 E Main Street, Amsterdam, NY
I don’t visit the small city of Amsterdam very often, but if I ever do find myself there on the banks of the Mohawk River, The Book Hound is one place I’d certainly visit again. Although the shop did have the feel of a place that didn’t get heavy traffic, it did have plenty of surprises waiting within.
144 W Main Street, Johnstown, NY
Driving away from the ice-churned Mohawk River and into the rolling foothills of the lower Adirondacks, I came upon Johnstown and its tightly clustered homes and quaintly urban downtown. That’s where you’ll find Mysteries on Main Street, but don’t judge this book(shop) by its cover, as the name may lead you to believe you’re entering a store specializing in mysteries. It doesn’t, but not to its detriment, as it has a nicely diverse offering.
600 Union Street, Schenectady, NY
The Whitney Book Corner resides at the intersection of Clinton and Union near downtown Schenectady, NY, not far from a string of pubs, restaurants, and cafes and a short walk from Jay Street and the renowned Proctor’s Theater. The flags out front were whipping in the February breeze when I arrived, and after a quick peek through the wide windows I knew I was in for an enjoyable book hunting experience.
841 Union Street, Schenectady, NY
The bookshops in Schenectady each have a distinct and individual feel to them, hitting a different sweet spot across the spectrum of what a bookstore can be—new, old, musty and dusty, cozy and clean, on and on. The moment I came across W Somers Bookseller on Union Street, I knew it would fall into the musty and dusty realm, but for what it lacked in brightness and order, it made up for in volume and diversity.
