Remember the days of the massive multi-story bookstore? You could get lost for hours in there, finding any number of nooks or crannies to read, daydream, plan your next novel. Too bad those days are gone forever…. Oh, wait. Hey Cincinnati!
“If you’ve spent any amount of time in Cincinnati, there’s a good chance you’ve passed by Ohio Book Store on Main Street,” writes Emily Jamar in Only in Your State. “This 5-story bookstore can’t be missed, and it’s truly a book lover’s dream. Each floor offers a new adventure to dive into, and since this Ohio landmark has been around since 1940, you can feel the history as you walk through the shelves in search of a hidden treasure.”
For eighty years now, this bookstore has been satisfying the appetites of Ohioans looking for any and all types of printed books (they carry more than 300,000 titles) including magazines and comic books. They also work to keep our collective print legacy in good working order.
“Besides being one of the largest bookstores in Ohio, Ohio Book Store specializes in book restoration. People send in books from all over for restoration and rebinding, as it can be a tedious process,” Jamar notes.
With bookstores and print books on the rise again, I’m betting on another solid 80 at least for this Cincinnati temple to the cult of books. The city, in fact, has more bookstores per capita than San Francisco, and is tied for seventh place among America’s most literate cities per 2014 data.
Long live books in this great American city and the beautiful state of Ohio (*our home base!).