The Guardian is asking readers who miss their bookstores which one is their favourite. I’ve had three influential bookstores in my life: the Coles I worked in as a teen, Three Lives in the Village in NYC, and The Bookshelf in Guelph, Ontario. Maybe Bakka Books on Queen was in there too. But if I had to choose the one I’d spent the most time in, it was probably a Barnes and Noble at the corner of Broadway and Astor. I think it’s like a vitamin shop, or something, now. But they had a huge poetry section and a coffee shop in there, and when I first moved to Manhattan, I barely ventured out of the East Village for six months. And I sat in that shop and read probably a full half of the books on the shelves.
What’s your most important bookstore?
Bookninja 
Past: The Used Book Store (Champaign, IL)
Present: Open Books (Chicago)
The Used Book Store was my college-era haunt as I hunted obsessively for books that I couldn’t afford to buy in new editions. Open Books is my current afternoon-sneaking-out-of-the-office haunt; I feel doubly good shopping there, not only for the great selection but also that it’s a not-for-profit whose sales fund youth literacy programs.
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