Awesome I genuinely love working with bookstores and…read moreauthors. There's something special about spaces filled with stories, creativity, and people who truly appreciate books. Even when bookstores are crowded and full of energy, they still carry that classic charm that reminds you of how real bookstores used to feel before everything became generic. Helping bookstores and authors grow through authentic promotion and marketing is something I truly enjoy because every book deserves the right audience and visibility.

Beautiful and charming old bookstore! Three floors with lots of books! Friendly staff! Love…read morevisiting this bookstore!

Best bookstore in London for language books (Celtic, German, English, Italian, Spanish, French,…read moreHebrew, Arabic, Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Greek, Dutch, etc.!!) and it has a cafe upstairs as well as a huge kids books area.

In 2018, after 115 years of independent bookselling, then-Chairman Christopher Foyle and the Board…read moreof Directors sold the company to Waterstones, with the proviso that the Foyles name must endure. Based on our recent visit, let's now call this place a chain on steroids. I just wonder how much the inevitable Corporate culture has robbed the old independent Foyles of its soul. Gayle and I spend a fair amount of time on various floors and sections. I found a nice Judaica book, a BBC publication for an upcoming PROMS program, and some filing folders. Gayle found a book she was looking for and a gift for back home. It was a fun and good outing, but not a great one. The place was clean and shiny, and with attentive and helpful employees. That's good and sometimes not. And if given more time, I'd would have preferred to be in a dusty independent specialty bookseller.

Hatchards is (at least the self-proclaimed) oldest book seller in London. It's a fantastic bookshop…read morewith 4 levels full of books. Perfectly sorted and organized by genre then author and title. There's a lot of great signed and first editions as well. Some rare and hard to find books. Prices are fair, service is friendly, all in all it's one of the nicest bookshops I've ever been in. I picked up some titles I haven't found in shops here in the states, especially those special printings. I requested they stamp my purchases with a shop stamp so I will always remember I bought these titles at the oldest London book shop!

This bookstore is really cool! The staff are neat and helpful. The book arrangements are fun and…read moreinviting. We ended up purchasing a book for my husband and some stationary that was themed. One said 'When the bard plays a banger on your birthday' and we cracked up at that one. It was a worthy buy. It was fun to walk around and just be near books. Thanks for having us!

This bookstore is pretty big with four floors of books and restrooms at every level by the stairs…read more They do also have an elevator of course. You can spend hours here, but eventually they will have to ask eve time to leave when they close.

So, made the mistake of trying to pop in here to grab a book however time was against me…read more Showed up at about 8 minutes to and was not permitted to enter because 'they had started clearing floors from the top'.YMMV but don't assume you can get in due to their published hours. I can on a Sunday not sure if they are more mellow when there is less God

A delightful trove of quality used books focused on UK architecture, design, literature, and…read morehistory. Found some gems here.

It's only when you come across a gem like this that you realise how few second hand bookstores…read morethere are in London these days. They used to be quite ubiquitous but now even charity shops don't seem to stock books anymore - it's all about vintage clothing these days ... Archive should be given museum status as it takes you right back to a time before Amazon and e-books. You can easily while away an entire afternoon on a discovery tour. I have to admit that I hardly ever buy second hand books as nothing beats a book fresh from the printers for me - I read mainly in bed and don't like the idea of a smelly old book between the sheets - which makes me wonder how a place like this can survive. I hope it'll still be here the next time I wander down Bell Street.

I love this waterstones! It is one of my favorite bookstores I have been to. The building is…read moreinteresting and has nice areas for sitting. The cafe is usually busy, and seating can be hard to find, but there is often some available.

I'm generally not a fan of chain stores, especially chain stores which sell books. The clinical…read moreaspect a coorporation brings detracts a great deal from the buying experience; I like the idea of rooting through a mountain of crap in order to find that one elusive beauty. Book stores especially seem to almost need this atmosphere of chaos to be credible. However, Waterstones on Gower Street, the flagship store of the Waterstones empire, and , therefore, supposedly the belly of the beast, is just annoyingly good. I want to hate it but try as I might I've been won over the the excellent choice, service and air-conditioning. Gower Street boasts 160,000 volumes along with a willingness to acquire new texts at your behest. Due to its close collaboration with the University of London, this Waterstones has a distinctly academic feel to it and is a great place to come and stock up for the new semester. They periodically offer gatherings and signings involving various authors and last year famously hosted a talk by Professor Stephen Hawking.

Good bookshops are dangerous places, and Daunt Books is one of the most dangerous of all. You can…read morelose yourself for hours, browsing through the recommendations temptingly laid out on tables. And while you're queuing to pay, there are more temptations on your way to the till - for book junkies this is worse than the sweet counters in supermarkets! Daunt Books is a small chain of independent booksellers with an emphasis on travel and literature. I like the way they curate their shops and always succeed to find a gift here - but not without buying one or two books to keep myself.

A trip to Holland Park is in order when I feel like I want to treat myself to a view of upscale…read morehomes, eat fancy deli foods, and, a recent discovery, peruse the Daunt bookshop outpost tucked into the main drag there. Compared to the Marylebone locale--the only other Daunt that I've visited--this shop is smaller, quainter, and, on my trip, super quiet. Ahh. I found an interesting-looking book, 'Mendelssohn Is on the Roof', quickly bought it and went on my merry way. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/05/books/trying-to-murder-a-statue.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

**Newly opened and currently open til 6pm but they are looking to expand their hours shortly. If…read moreyou're unsure about opening hours and you want to visit, I recommend firing off a tweet to @SECONDHOMELDN ** Popped in to Libreria last night for a quick reconnaissance mission. New independent bookshops aren't exactly ten a penny. It also happened to be World Book Day, I have just realised. It was meant to be. I love how it looks from the outside. Like a portal to another world. You go down Hanbury Street, think you must've missed it and then...suddenly it's there. Stylish black shopfront with a nice inviting glow. This was only a very quick visit but I like how they do things in Libreria. First, I have to note that there was a Riga RP-1 record player with Velvet Underground & Nico on the turntable so...good start. No espresso bar here. No mobiles allowed. Comfy seating and little nooks to sit down and check out a book. Tick tick tick. Sally, Libreria's director, introduced herself to me and explained how things were laid out. Very friendly and helpful. Books are largely organised alphabetically, fiction on the left and nonfic on the right. However, within that, books are clustered into themes or ideas, in order to promote interesting combinations of books nestling next to each other. Great idea. Pure A-Z is so 2015. Also, they have asked celebs to do a mini-curation of their favourite books. Shami Chakrabarti's faves are currently on display. I think the idea is to change everything round every quarter. Events are also gonna happen here. I dutifully added my email to the mailing list on the front desk. Waterstones can do one.

A quaint independent bookstore in the eastern part of London…read more https://prashantmudgal.wordpress.com/2019/08/07/the-cost-of-living/

Visited The Notting Hill Bookshop during our trip to London and we loved the selection of books…read morethey offer. If you love the idea of "blind date with a book", this bookshop offers it and they have a lot to choose from and we were very pleased with the books we ended up getting. The staff is very knowledgeable and friendly. Highly recommend visiting this bookshop.

You won't be the only one trying to snap a photo in front of the store! What I love about this…read moreplace is that the shop is actually cute on the inside and although a popular tourist spot thanks to Julia and Hugh, it's a great bookshop on its own. What I was surprised about was that a number of other book shops have popped up in Notting Hill trying to catch the tourists, but this is the OG.

We stopped into this record shop because it was down the street from Sister Ray and also Sounds of…read morethe Universe. To be honest, it was the least impressive of the three stores and we didn't buy anything. It wasn't a bad record shop. But it wasn't our particular type of music really, it was pretty small and very honestly it's dwarfed by its two neighbors in terms fo prowess as a go-to vinyl destination. Still, if you're in the area hunting vinyl, it wouldn't hurt to stop just to see what there is to see.

Not a great shop IMO. Better than Sister Ray, but the condition of a lot of the records was…read morehonestly quite disappointing. Lots of bag rash and cloudy LPs described as "VG+"... lol no. Those are junk. I did find a few things, and the staff were fine, but for the top dollar pricing they have on most of their records, you're better off taking a gamble on eBay. They also had very loud EDM playing over the speakers. I had a similar problem with sister ray. You want store music to be pretty neutral, not polarizing. I had to actually put my noise canceling headphones in to browse as the music was giving me anxiety.