Growing up in Germany, whenever we visited family in Britain one of my favourite things to do was go visit the big bookshops in Cardiff city centre (this was back before Amazon, so you couldn’t easily get English books in Germany). Books were my escape from school, parents, anxiety – generally, life – and finding a new book or discovering a new author was something I really looked forward to.

Fast forward several decades and I now mostly read on an e-reader and discover new books on Storygraph. While the convenience is obviously huge, I do miss that sense of serendipity of randomly finding the perfect novel tucked away on a bookshelf.

Today, most bookshops seem to survive by only selling bestsellers, games, stationery and other random items, which presumably help keep them afloat but does make them all feel rather generic. The kids’ sections (which is usually what I’m looking for these days, with two young readers at home) are particularly dire, mainly featuring popular series that you can find anywhere and celebrity-authored books.

As a parent, you find yourself reading a lot of books to your kids. So I’ve spent ages researching online trying to find books I think they’ll like and that I won’t mind reading to them.

So it was a pleasant surprise to find not one but two truly fantastic bookshops in Menlo Park on a recent work trip to the Bay Area:

Feldman’s Books is a second-hand bookshop and physical love-letter to reading: the shelves have an incredible assortment of old, very old and recent-ish titles across all genres. The layout of the tall shelves invites you to lose yourself in a nook filled with something unexpected like chess strategy, or aviation books.
A fantastic soundtrack playing in the background rounded out the experience. Reading up on it later, I’m clearly the last person to find out about this Menlo Park institution.

After finding two books for my kids, I strolled around the town a bit, enjoying the novelty of sitting outside without a jacket in November having iced tea before heading to the next bookstore:

Kepler’s Books has a wide selection of new books and, most importantly, very knowledgeable and friendly book-loving staff members who knew exactly what kids’ books to recommend.

Again I walked out with two books that I hadn’t come across online before that seemed perfect (and all four books proved to be big hits at home).

It was a nice reminder of how great independent booksellers can be and how much I enjoy browsing physical books and the excitement of finding something that captures your imagination.

It was a really nice way to spend 3h before my flight home and I plan to try to spend more time finding great bookshops on future trips.