[Shaun J. Russell]

Some of those sites would be "dream destinations" for me. There's just nothing like a good used bookstore. I've mentioned before how Henderson's Books in Bellingham, WA was a panacea for me when I was in my late teens / twenties in Vancouver, B.C. I visited two or three times per year and came back with some great finds, like first editions of Animal Farm, The Moon is Down, All Quiet on the Western Front, Aldous Huxley's Cicadas etc. Most of the bigger used bookshops are quite money-wise to first editions (i.e.: I paid a pretty penny for a first edition of Auden at Strand Books in New York), but there's something pretty special about finding a fairly rare, or at least uncommon, edition of something randomly at a used bookstore.

Having lived in Virginia for the past four years, I'm always a bit disappointed that there aren't really any good used bookstores in the area. Especially in D.C. I've visited Richard McKay's Books out in Manassas a couple of times now, but despite its size, there is a very sterile feel to the place, and the poetry section is ridiculously tiny (though the literature section is fairly sizable). One would expect several large ones in the greater D.C. area, but so far I've only come across a few small-to-medium sized ones with middling selections (Bryn Mawr / Lamppost, Bridge Books, one in Eastern Market). As such, I do find myself buying a lot of books online these days, but there's really no substitute for spending a couple of hours in a used bookstore.

Incidentally, one of the best I've been in recently is Midtown Scholar in Harrisburg, PA. I'd ordered a few books from them online, then had the opportunity to stop by on the way back from Buffalo after Christmas. They have a large poetry selection, and an even larger literary theory / criticism section, so it's certainly a worthwhile detour if anyone's in that part of the country.