Where I've been buying books.
Every indie bookstore I've shopped or plan to, organized by city. No affiliate links. Pick a city, or scroll down for the full timeline.
Los Angeles, California
Where the reading started. Childhood, teenage years, college — the first bookstores, the first libraries, the first books that rearranged things. Nineteen years in one sprawling city.
Bay Area, California
Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco — nine years moving between them as the career took shape. A region with some of the country's most singular independent bookstores.
New York, New York
Manhattan, briefly. Two years, but the density of bookstores per square mile does something to a reader.
Nashville, Tennessee
Where I am now. Nashville has several bookstores I'm getting to know — Parnassus is the one I actually shop at, but the list is bigger than I realized.
Chicago, Illinois
Where I'm headed. A city with one of the best indie bookstore cultures in the country — I've been making a list long before I've made the move.
This list grows. If you run an indie shop in one of these cities and I've missed you — or want to recommend something in a city I haven't lived in yet — write in. Corrections and additions always welcome.
Five cities, one shelf.
That's the trail. Pick a city above to descend into the bookstores I shopped, plan to shop, or wish I'd shopped while I lived there. The full lists, the dashboards, and the about page live one click deeper.