3 Bookstores in Vermont

Book By Book

Last week, my husband and I enjoyed a lovely week in Vermont, escaping the extreme heat here in Delaware for the comfortable kind of summer weather I remember growing up in western New York. We camped, hiked, kayaked, and spent some time exploring three wonderful little Vermont towns: Manchester, Stowe, and Woodstock. Each of the towns had an independent bookstore, which is not unusual. Tiny Vermont has 20 independent bookstores in all! (you can check out a list and locations at the link). This is a great state for book lovers!

The largest and most impressive of the bookstores we visited was Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, VT, which hosts the annual Booktopia event (that you are probably sick of hearing me talk about!). You can read about my attendance at Booktopia 2017 here. Northshire is a wonderful bookstore with a huge selection, covering several floors, including used books and an amazing children’s area. It also has an excellent cafe and coffee shop attached, along with a big room full of tables and WiFi. It would be easy to spend a whole day just wandering the aisles of Northshire! I was just there in May for Booktopia (and bought a big stack of books for Father’s Day gifts), but I wanted to show my husband, so we spent a couple of hours there on our trip. One of the great things at Northshire is the many shelf talkers to point you to the staff favorites. We picked out some books for our son’s birthday, plus other gifts, and some books and journals for ourselves. If you live anywhere near southern Vermont, a trip to Northshire is a must! We camped at nearby beautiful Emerald Lake State Park.

We were camped near Stowe, VT, at Elmore State Park on the only rainy day of our trip. It worked out fine because we had plans to meet an old college friend of mine and her husband for lunch in Stowe, so we headed into town early to escape the cold and rain. We enjoyed browsing through the Stowe Mercantile, with a wide array of unusual handmade items, gifts, and more. Then, we took our time meandering through Bear Pond Books next door (on Main Street inside the Old Depot). This was a much smaller bookstore than Northshire but with a well-curated collection and pleasant open shelving that is perfect for browsing. They have a nice selection of Vermont-based books, a great children’s section, and cards and gifts as well. Even though we didn’t NEED any more books, we bought another book for our son and a few more items.

Finally, our last stop was the town of Woodstock, where we stayed at nearby Coolidge State Park. We went hiking early in the day and planned to stroll around Woodstock, go in the shops, and have dinner in the evening. The only problem? The entire town of Woodstock shut down at 5 pm! Every single shop in town was closed when we got into town at 5:15. We did enjoy a nice dinner in Woodstock that night, but our shopping was relegated to literal window shopping. The Yankee Bookshop in Woodstock claims to be Vermont’s oldest independent bookstore. Though we didn’t get to browse its aisles, we did spend some time peeking in its windows! It looks like a small-ish shop, though it may have gone back further than we could see from the front windows. The shelves we could see looked like a nicely curated selection, including some Vermont-specific books. We’ll have to check it out more closely next time.

Vermont is definitely a great destination for book lovers! Its quaint small towns are filled with independent bookstores…and good food, too! Vermont is also known for its focus on local, fresh food, so we had some wonderful meals there – look for upcoming Weekend Cooking features here on some of our favorite Vermont restaurants.