East Bay Booksellers has been through a lot since opening in 1989, including a fire that shuttered the original shop in 2024. It has reopened just half a mile away, losing none of its magic. “It matches my freak. I’d follow their buyers anywhere they want to go,” said Alexis Madrigal, host of KQED’s “Forum” and author of “The Pacific Circuit (opens in new tab),” which examines Silicon Valley’s rise through the lens of Oakland. Madrigal loves the shelves filled with “weird novels in translation, magazines about compost — physical and spiritual), a perfect slice of new academic books, strange imports from presses no one has ever heard of, a massive reprint box set of every publication the radical designers Archigram ever put out.” Basically, everything. 

East Bay Booksellers (opens in new tab), 6022 College Ave., Oakland

Tan may be forever associated with San Francisco’s Chinatown because of her bestselling book “The Joy Luck Club (opens in new tab),” which became a hit movie that shaped how the world understands the Chinese community in the U.S. Nowadays, she lives across the Golden Gate Bridge, in Marin, where her favorite bookstore is Book Passage in Corte Madera. She frequently drops in to sign books, pick up orders, and sit with a chai latte, catching up with owner Elaine Petrocelli. What keeps her coming back is the programming: a steady stream of author events that draw fans from well beyond Marin. “Book Passage has the best author events, both live and virtual, at the store or at larger venues,” she said. 

Book Passage (opens in new tab), 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera

A few doors down from the Castro Theater, Fabulosa Books feels like an extension of the neighborhood’s personality: bright, political, and proudly queer. For Anders, author of “All the Birds in the Sky (opens in new tab),” Fabuloso is a place for “queer vivacity.” The Hugo Award winner and longtime presence in the city’s queer literary scene notes that the staff includes writers whom she admires. She especially loves the events “where drag queens authors and activists joyously celebrate the books that are being suppressed elsewhere.”

Fabulosa Books (opens in new tab), 489 Castro St.

Books Inc. in Mountain View is the kind of place you step into on impulse before a dinner date or after brunch and stay longer than you might have planned. Parini Shroff, author of the darkly comic novel “The Bandit Queens (opens in new tab),” about women navigating violence in rural India, cannot pass without being drawn into the “fun, warm space.” “It’s physically impossible,” she said, which is a problem, since the Castro Street store is within walking distance of her home. She held her debut book launch there so will always “feel tenderly toward it.” 

Books Inc (opens in new tab)., 317 Castro St., Mountain View

For environmental nonfiction writer Bridget Lyons, author of “Entwined: Dispatches from the Intersection of Species (opens in new tab),” visiting Bookshop Santa Cruz is part of her weekly routine. On Pacific Avenue, a scene of surf shops, vintage stores, and street performers, Bookshop Santa Cruz acts as “the main gathering place for book lovers and curious minds,” she said. She heads straight to the science and nature section to see what’s new, then browses outward in the 20,000-square-foot store, relying on handwritten staff reviews. What matters most to her is the store’s role in the city. “They’ve been right there on Pacific Avenue since 1966, and they take their role as a friendly space, a source of knowledge, and hub of community conversation seriously,” Lyons praised.

Bookshop Santa Cruz (opens in new tab), 1520 Pacific Ave, Santa Cruz

Eclectic, lively, and built around conversation, Booksmith in Haight-Ashbury carries on the area’s legacy of 1960s counterculture. Elison, whose Philip K. Dick Award winner “The Book of the Unnamed Midwife” (opens in new tab) explores gender and survival in a post-apocalyptic world, recalls hearing Leni Zumas read from “Red Clocks” before she stepped up to the same podium to read from her own work. “It’s a perfect neighborhood to get ice cream or coffee, and the best bookshop for a gift or a close encounter with the literary world,” she said. Martin, author of “Love/Aggression (opens in new tab),” a novel on queer community, adds that the book club is a major allure: “I love the Booksmith so much that I drive across the Bay Bridge to go to their book club every month,” she said, where readers take on “often plotless novels, frequently about women behaving badly.”

Booksmith, (opens in new tab) 1727 Haight St.

Sleepy Cat Books lives up to its name. There’s a cat in the window, or by the cash register — white, fluffy, usually asleep, and not always in the mood to be pet. The store feels like a holdout from an earlier version of the street, with a mix of new and used titles stacked tightly and a pickup point for online orders through Bookshop.org (opens in new tab), a platform that supports independent bookstores. For Berman, best known for “The Die, (opens in new tab)” a speculative novel that plays with chance, parallel lives, and probability, intimacy is the point. She described the shop as “homey and cozy” and pointed to the recent wave of closures around Berkeley, including Eastwind Books, which had an Asian American focus, and Sagrada, a small metaphysical shop near Telegraph, as signs of how the landscape is shifting. “At a time when local bookstores are disappearing, I want to spread the word so we can keep them going. And yes, the cat is awesome!”

Sleepy Cat Books (opens in new tab), 2509 Telegraph Ave., Berkeley

“I’ve been going there since I was a kid,” said Tokuda-Hall, author of “The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea, (opens in new tab)” a fantasy through a queer, anti-colonial lens. “It’s the only bookstore I know of that shelves my books next to Tolkien. It’s also, to me, the canonically correct bookstore. Books stacked on the floor. Books stacked to the ceilings. Dust. I love it.” Located on Claremont Avenue in Berkeley, where older storefronts and quaint neighborhood institutions sit just far enough from campus to feel removed from the bustle, Dark Carnival Books has a quirky exterior and an interior that feels like it’s from another era. Focused on science fiction and fantasy, the shop has been around since the 1940s, and stepping inside means navigating stacks that seem to ignore conventional shelving altogether. 

Dark Carnival Books (opens in new tab), 3086 Claremont Ave., Berkeley

In between Valencia Street’s vintage stores, bars and bakeries sits Dog Eared Books, a small but mighty Mission institution. Rex is a fan and also works there, shelving and curating science fiction and fantasy while preparing for the release of their debut collection, “The Wildcraft Drones (opens in new tab),” next month. They’ve helped build out a section devoted to “solarpunk and diverse futurisms,” reflecting a desire they see in readers every day. “People are really hungry for detailed visions of a future that isn’t horrible right now,” Rex said. “If we can imagine it, maybe we can make it happen.”

Dog Eared Books (opens in new tab), 900 Valencia St.

You can’t think about San Francisco bookstores without imagining City Lights. In North Beach, where tourist traffic and retro Italian cafes collide, City Lights is a mainstay with a rich history as a crucial hub for the Beat Generation. For Alexandra, author of “Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area (opens in new tab),” it’s “a historical landmark.” When she started coming to San Francisco in the ’90s, it took time to process that this was once “a real-life hangout” for Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. What keeps pulling her back is the sense of political history: “I cannot step foot in the store without thinking about all of the battles fought there at the beginning,” she said, pointing to the 1957 arrest of store manager Shig Murao for selling “Howl” to an undercover cop. “Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the founder, had this store rooted in free speech and rebellion from the very beginning,” she said. Plus, she said, with Vesuvio Cafe next door, City Lights remains ideal for a “grab a book, grab a drink” afternoon.

City Lights Bookstore (opens in new tab), 261 Columbus Ave.

Paul, author of the New York Times bestseller “The Gutsy Girl (opens in new tab)” and “Fighting Fire (opens in new tab),” a memoir about being one of the city’s first female firefighters, said Christopher’s curation is almost suspiciously spot-on. “I’ve always suspected that Christopher’s shelves are so perfectly curated because the owner, Tee, has consulted my siblings and all my exes, the current Pulitzer Prize winner, and Michelle Obama,” she said. 

Tsui, author of “American Chinatown (opens in new tab),” which won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature for its exploration of race, place, and community, said the intimacy is what makes Christopher’s memorable. “It is so deeply embedded in the fabric of the neighborhood that it’s familial,” she said. 

Christopher’s Books (opens in new tab), 1400 18th St.

For Bullwinkel, author of “Headshot (opens in new tab),”a debut novel that landed on Barack Obama’s 2024 summer reading list, Bookshop West Portal’s  book club is a major appeal. Run by Susan Tunis, it’s “a master class in literature and contemporary literary culture” but also “really fun,” she said. She raved about the shop’s ambience: “Off a side door there is a charming courtyard where the store frequently hosts salons, author signings, parties, violin concertos, free kids art classes, and beyond.” 

Bookshop West Portal, (opens in new tab) 80 W. Portal Ave.