In Praise of Good Bookstores

For the Reader Who Has a Favourite Bookstore and Feels Personally Responsible for Its Survival

You know the one. The shop where you go in for one book and leave an hour later having browsed every shelf, discovered three authors you'd never heard of, and spent more than you planned. Jeff Deutsch — former director of Chicago's legendary Seminary Co-op — knows it too. And in this quietly urgent book, he makes the case for why that experience is irreplaceable.

In Praise of Good Bookstores explores what makes a bookstore genuinely good: the space, the abundance, the sense of community, and above all, the art of browsing — that particular state of moving through shelves as though moving through your own mind. Drawing on his decades as a bookseller and his Orthodox Jewish upbringing, Deutsch argues that bookstores aren't retail. They're civic institutions. Places of discovery, refuge, and meaning.

Details

• By Jeff Deutsch, former director of Chicago's Seminary Co-op Bookstores
• Explores space, time, abundance, community, and the value of browsing
• A defence of the bookstore as an essential cultural institution
• Paperback, published 2025

Perfect For

• The reader who considers their local bookstore a second home
• A gift for the bookseller, the browser, or the devoted regular
• Anyone who believes one-click shopping will never replace the thrill of the shelf