Who visits Portland Without Popping into Powell’s Book Store?

Me, that’s who 🙁

Unfortunately, it rained throughout my stay there and I didn’t get to step out for a bit of a go-see at all. In some says, I am very disappointed, but in other ways I (and my folks) are extremely relieved.

You see, we all know what it means when Nishita enters a book store. I tend to run amok for hours on end, agonizing between various choices, and coming out with a pile of books, which eventually the hub (my new nickname for the husband) edits into a more manageable selection.

This time without him to rein me in, I would have just run amok and then later faced the heartache of excess baggage and being forced to return or struggle with managing the stuff.

I was at least able to visit the Powell’s airport store, and ended up being pretty impressed by what they have to offer.

Most airport book stores are bland, sterile places with just numerous copies of the latest bestsellers and magazines floating about. But Powell’s is pretty different. They have a small but well-edited stock of books, and very helpful customer service assistants. They even have a really good selection of used books at very reasonable prices. Even bigger plus, these are not the used books that I am used to -you know the ones with the dog ears, cover missing, and so on that we get in India. These books looked as good as new for the most part, but selling at more than half off the original price.

I loved browsing through their selection and even ended up buying a couple of cute gifts for my friends – a little reminder of the time I sent there.

Unfortunately, it’s an airport store and I have to catch my flight, and so just could not linger there as much as I would have liked.

My thought as I was leaving the place? If the airport store is this good, how awesome would the main store have been?

Sheesh, I seriously missed out 🙁