Book Circle

Books, books and more books are the center of attention at this gravity-defying shop in Downtown Los Angeles, where 250,000 tomes literally form walls, windows and archways. All bookstores are a refuge for solitary or introspective, but this one seems to have its own place in history with catacombs, vaults and catwalks surrounded by books every step of the way.

The Last Bookstore is California’s largest used and new book and record store. “In recent years there has been a big effort to rejuvenate Downtown Los Angeles,” wrote Reif Larsen for The Times. “Amid this urban rejuvenation you will find the Last Bookstore, one of the world’s best. In the past, Los Angeles had developed an unfair reputation for being anti-intellectual. In reality, the city is a vibrant, artistic, literary place; perhaps it is the sprawl that makes its various beacons of culture feel like stars in a distant constellation. The list of writers who have attempted to capture the city’s many beguiling contradictions is long and varied: Raymond Chandler, Joan Didion, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nathanael West, Charles Bukowski, Eve Babitz.

“Their ghosts haunt the Last Bookstore. When you enter, you are asked to hand over your backpack. This is ostensibly to prevent shoplifting but it felt more symbolic, as though you must leave any remnant of the outside world behind. As soon as you pass through the front door, it is as if you have entered a different era, before the death of our collective attention … I spent all afternoon there, stumbling upon books that I never knew I was missing.

This photo appeared with a Times Travel article July 23, 2018.