Powell’s City of Books – Portland, OR

I was really excited to visit Powell’s City of Books – really, really excited! This stop was “unique to the area”, “educational” and “art/culture” on our itinerary.

“Powell’s City of Books is the largest used and new bookstore in the world, occupying an entire city block and housing approximately one million books. There are ten rooms: Green, Blue, Orange, Rose, Purple, Red, Gold, Pearl, Coffee, and the Rare Book Room. The public has access to the inventory housed in the nine rooms of the store, including literature, children’s and young adult, science fiction and fantasy, mystery, romance, graphic novels, history, politics, religion, heath and wellness, philosophy, fine arts, crafts, science, entertainment, cooking, gardening, new arrivals, bestsellers, used books, small press, and gift items.” – from the website

We walked a little over 1/2 a mile from our hotel to Powell’s. I checked with the front desk to make sure our route didn’t take us through any seedy sections of downtown.

We popped into Lovejoy Bakers en route for a snack.

We passed some cool murals on our walk.

We made it to our destination unscathed by any city riffraff.

Beside a million books, Powell’s also had lots of really fun “not book” items. I let the kiddos each choose one book and one not book item to purchase. Here’s what we got.

“Knight Owl” by Christopher Denise is an absolutely adorable and delightful picture book. You simply must check it out!

Powell’s was great. I was initially confused by the “used” books and when I asked an employee, she kindly explained that the used books were mixed in with the new books. This is a good system if you are looking for a particular title. When you find the book you want, you can look through the copies to see if there is a used version. However, my personal preference would be to search through a section of used books for my desired titles. As it worked out, all the books we bought were new, there were no used books for the titles we selected. We spent 2 hours at Powell’s browsing and shopping. We easily could’ve stayed longer but we needed to jet off to our next destination to meet up with some of my extended family. Stay tuned friends.

Until next time, happy reading and book shopping!