Portland, OR (1) – Powell’s Books

I have heard many good things about Portland especially that it is trending and artistic. Well, after I visited, I think it is too small for my taste. My favorite is still New York City :). However, there are a few things that are absolute cool about Portland, like Mount Hood, pacific oceans and Powell’s Books.

Powell’s Books is the world’s largest independent book store. It is so big that it redefined my definition of an independent book store. The store has 4-5 floors, but very spacious, even there were many people for both times I visited, it feels comfortable navigating round. It’s like visiting the Mall of America, and after a day I explored at Powell’s, I get all the steps in 🙂

It’s not only about the size, but also have you seen this entire wall of the best seller Powell’s and daily book signing events, including the big name like Scott Anderson

The books here are so complete, like many versions of “Great Gatsby”, “The Old Man and the Sea”. See this whole shelf of Andy Warhol.

I love to browse their staff pick’s and artist’s pick. Here, Cristina is recommending a type of pens I used daily 🙂

Those are free bookmarks recommending different types of books. It’s interesting to see that animal farms and Kurt Vonnegut are still Power’s best sellers and C.S.LEWIS is still so important.

There are also used books. For the same book, different copies of a used book have different prices. They are very popular too. I randomly picked an expensive copy but when I circled back, the cheaper one was already gone :). They have some hard-to-see books too. It almost feels I was visiting a history museum.

On top of the warehouse, there is this rare book room. You have to put down all your belongings and pick up a pass to enter this room —- here it only contains limited editions and rare books, and only a fixed number of people (like 15?) can be in that room a time, monitored by the security guards. This copy “a young man in search of love — paintings and drawing” is $175 🙂

Look at this map! How lucky are the Portland people. There are so many independent book stores. To support this market, I am sure that this city is not only full of artists but also intellectuals.