Bookstores Worth the Trip – First in a Series

by Shari Randall

When friends visit my corner of Connecticut, I take them to see my favorite sights – the lighthouses, historic buildings, and unique shops and restaurants that make this a fun place to live. We’re also lucky in this small corner of the world to have some great independent bookstores.

One of my favorites is, well, a bit quirky.

The Book Barn in Niantic, CT has been delighting booklovers since April 1988, with a hiatus in 1990 when a fire nearly destroyed the building. The store recovered and has been going strong, so strong it has outgrown its original home and now has two outposts, Downtown (Audio to UFOs, Manga, Parenting, Children’s, Comics) and Store Four (Everything from Astronomy to Writing, with Mystery, Thriller, and True Crime), and over 500,000 books.

And yes, "Store Four" wasn't a typo. The store grew to four separate buildings, but my favorite outpost, a small third storefront that was devoted to mostly mysteries, was folded into Store Four, so mystery lovers should head there first. I never left that collection without a find – a paperback The Elusive Mrs.Pollifax and the short story collection The Cat Who Had Fourteen Tales by Lillian Jackson Braun. Each only $1!

Along with knowledgeable booksellers, several bookstore cats, and free coffee, the main Book Barn also has goats you can pet and feed. I kid you not! Sorry! There’s something about the sense of humor at the Book Barn that is infectious. The signage alone is worth the trip.

The main barn is so busy it even has a parking lot attendant to direct traffic. When you leave your car, you pass a table where staffers will evaluate and perhaps buy your books. “Ellis Island” is the first stop where stalls of shelves hold new arrivals. Everywhere are fun touches – a Hobbit door, a playground, benches, an oversized chess set.

You can visit The Underworld, aka Hades, (see photo above), pass through two graveyards full of Halloween decorations to a building called The Haunted for mystery and horror books, through to The Annex for poetry and essays, to the last outbuilding, the Last Page, for nonfiction.

Then the Main building awaits – three levels of well-organized book nirvana.

Kids’ books? Yes.

Teen books? Yes

Military history? Art? Arthurian Legends? Psychology? Women’s Studies? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And more!

Is the Book Barn worth the trip? You bet.

The Book Barn, 41 West Main Street, Niantic, CT 06357

Downtown, 269 Main Street, Niantic, CT 06357

Store Four, 55 West Main Street, Niantic, CT 06357

What’s your favorite bookstore?

Not Your Usual Used Book Shop: The Book Barn

Ah, the pleasures of a good used book shop - discovering old favorites, new soon-to-be favorites, grabbing that best seller from three years ago for $3, leaving with a bag of yellowing paperbacks that Barnes and Noble doesn't carry. The creaking floors, jammed shelves, the air of lost treasure.

Last weekend I visited the grand daddy of all used book stores - especially if grand daddy was a bibliophile hippie with a Ph.D and a sense of humor. The Book Barn in Niantic, CT is a used book store on steroids, bitten by a radioactive spider, and sprinkled with fairy dust. Yankee Magazine named it one of the best used bookstores in New England.

Located in a little beach town, the Book Barn isn't just a book store. It's a sprawling complex plus three other buildings along Main Street (Rte. 156), together housing over 500,000 volumes. This reader's utopia began in 1988 as three book shelves and a couch in the basement of that main barn building and it hasn't stopped growing.

All of the stores are great places to spend an afternoon, but visiting the Main Book Barn is an event. Like every used book shop, the main barn and its several outbuildings (including an, er, outhouse) are chock full of books of every description. Looking for nonfiction of all types, paranormal, romance, mystery, cook books, biographies, children's, young adult? Art books? Hardcover? Paperback? Graphic novels?
They're here.

Cats? They've got em.
Coffee? Yep.
But as soon as you step on the property, you'll soon see why the Book Barn is different.

Want a Hobbit hole? Yes, the Book Barn has one.

A haunted Halloween annex with wall to wall horror and paranormal paperbacks? Oh, yeah.

One approaches the Book Barn on a path that leads past Ellis Island for the new arrivals.

Hades with its paperback mysteries (through G) and paranormal romances and Chick Lit.

True Crime complete with chalk outline.

What other used bookstore has its own graveyard-

and goats?

The organization is precise with the Book Barn's special brand of wit.

This former librarian was impressed by the exceptional organization of their collections and the snug, must-free main building. Not so impressed by the fact that a few of the books live in outbuildings and shelving, covered with a plastic tarp. But this does not deter any book buyers, even on the cold, rainy January day we visited.

If you go, remember there are four separate stores each with broad specialization, all within a few miles. The Book Barn is the big Kahuna and has the Hobbit hole and the goats.

The Midtown Store carries children's, crafts, romance, and westerns. It's my favorite due to its huge collection of mystery paperbacks, including classic mystery paperbacks for one dollar.

Store Four and Three Quarters specializes in law, linguistics, foreign languages, farming, geography, cartography, travel, Easton Press, leather bound books and so much more.

The Downtown location has everything from Astronomy through Wiccan Studies and everything in between - film, dance, theater, cars and motorcycles, humor, and a huge science fiction and fantasy collection, plus thousands of DVDs.

What's your favorite used book shop?