Bookman Too

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ocweeklybestof | Costa Mesa, CA | 160 Reviews

Now that Anaheim's legendary Book Baron is closed and Acres of Books in Long Beach is in the death throes of its months-long closing sale, the mantle of the county's best used bookstore falls upon the Bookman empire. The mothership still occupies three units in an Orange strip mall, still devotes a special section to communism, and still has almost all of its massive inventory online and on the bookshelves. A little bit more ramshackle is the smaller Huntington Beach location, which strangely devotes the front of the store to bad local art and whose book selection skews toward the more obscure (old Mickey Mouse comic-book collections, Orange County history pamphlets and a bunch of presidential biographies). However, its website—while better-looking than the original's—doesn't always tell you all the books in the boxes and piles. And it allows you to trade in books for full store credit, unlike those half-only bastards in Orange. Then again, it's the latter place where you can buy a complete, eight-volume, 1840 edition of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for only $97!