Crossing the Bridge

By Scott Smith in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 13, 2006 10:38PM

There’s nothing we love more than a quiet, cloudy afternoon and a leisurely stroll through a bookstore. The best place we’ve found to do that is Unabridged Books.

We tend to get overwhelmed in chain bookstores, there’s too much to see and we end up walking out before we even look at the new fiction section. But at Unabridged, there's variety, the store is more user-friendly and the employees are more eager to find you the right book.

A huge travel section in the basement has everything from Lonely Planet to Frommers. Upstairs, hushed, intellectual conversation is the norm (until we ruined that by seeing an old friend in the abundant gay and lesbian section). Dummies books are stacked skyscraper high on their very own shelf and the best sellers and new books are easily found and flipped through. Big sunny windows and soft cushions invite us to read first lines of books to our hearts content.

But the best parts of Unabridged are the mini-reviews and information cards taped to the shelves. The reviews, from the employees at the store, can be anything from letting you know you’re reading a good book (“One of New York Times Best Books of 2004," reads one) to funny (regarding The Orchid Thief: “You don’t have to a horticulture enthusiast to be transplanted…um, transported by this book”). Unabridged is so good at what it does, we walked out of there with five books that we didn’t know we wanted in the first place.

Image: Chicagopride.org

Thanks, Margaret!