Wow. Powell’s Books is an amazing place. It’s huge. One could go in and never emerge (except I’m sure the staff would certainly shoo you out and show you the way to the door at closing time). Nearly every section known to bookstoredom is represented. Spent a couple of hours there, but I felt like I really only scratched the surface of this massive pile of books and bookshelves otherwise known as Powell’s Books. And, of course, I walked away with a couple of books, too.
Some facts about the store from their website:
- 68,000 square feet packed with books
- approximately 3,000 people walk in and buy something every day
- another 3,000 people just browse and drink coffee
- our parking garage provides space for 40 cars (ok, so there are bigger parking garages)
- we stock 122 major subject areas and more than 3,500 subsections
- you’ll find more than 1,000,000 volumes on our shelves
- approximately 80,000 book lovers browse the City’s shelves every day, in Portland and via the Internet. So is our mother ship the world’s largest bookstore? Heck, it may be bigger than your whole town.
Book lovers everywhere, if you get to Portland, do be sure to make the pilgrimage to this book mecca.
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