The Lexington Book Crawl

Small towns with independent bookstores offer solace. Our recent adventure for hiking in the Shenandoah Valley found us staying just outside of Lexington, Virginia. It’s mostly identified with American history: The Jackson House, Washington and Lee University, streets lined with historic plaques. With a deep commitment to maintaining history, the Lexington downtown houses a lovely selection of shops and eateries.

And books. So we crawled. We searched four:

The Bookery

A hoarder’s paradise. Prepare for the smell. Let me call it scent. That sounds better. An intoxicating decomposing of cellulous and lignin. After a few minutes immersed in the sweet vanillin and almond perfume, my body began feeling more relaxed. Maybe I was just getting stoned. One section smelled of coffee. A decent diner coffee. I lingered.

And prepare for the overwhelm. Thousands of books. One travel source referenced 40,000 titles. Good luck. Stocked top to bottom as much as left to right. Handwritten genre signs. Heaven. The trick is to calm the eyes. Find a mindful focus on one shelf and move the gaze slowly. I sometimes rolled my finger along the shelf edge to fight off distraction. Let serendipity rule. No worries about searching for an individual title. Let the title find you.

The Bookery is on W. Nelson. Be sure to hit The Palms on the corner for burgers and beer. It’s a good idea to eat before The Bookery. The browse might take hours.

Downtown Books

On Main Street. If you’re walking from The Bookery, cross the street and make a left. The polar opposite of The Bookery. Small spaces. Small inventory. Less selection, though, brought more light, with the shop inviting thoughtful hunting through curated corners. These are mostly new and newer books. The crawling was even better as the proprietor was warm and inviting, laughing with us about books and life. And destructive children. She had a funny sign on display regarding unattended young ones, and since M deals with this every day in the library, it sparked and then fueled a genuine hilarity of story swapping.

And she had blind dates. I’m a sucker for blind date books. M, not so much, since she makes them at work, but I was all in. And there was a cute coffee mug. To all independent bookstores across the land, please take note: a great coffee mug can be an important part of the indie-crawl experience.

The Historian’s Books

Don’t go. It had a handsome sign, and I was excited. And then I wasn’t. It’s one room, two shelves, and handfuls of second hand big box stuff everyone has already read. The owner shouted from a backroom he was trying not to mess up an order and couldn’t come out. He obviously hadn’t retired from a successful sales job. Oh well. Crawls come with good and bad and this was a bad one. But heads up, there’s some amazing ice cream down this street, Washington, Sweet Treats, and it’s a good place to go after a disappointing experience.

Rockbridge Regional Library

Yep. We went to the library. If you’re not putting a local library on your book crawls, you are missing out. Libraries always have books for sale, and these are usually funding some nonprofit aspect within the library system, or the library itself.

Rockbridge Regional has a great bookshop. It’s right in the main area just after the front desk. That was the first clue they took it seriously. Usually, the books for sale are on some shelf or shelves or even just carts in a dusty distant corner. Rockbridge stocked four big shelves with curated selections. The delight was nothing looked used. Having grown accustomed to dog ears and crinkled covers and look out for those little book bugs that squish in the pages, Rockbridge impressed. The books were beautiful. Small town charm also prevailed, as the Book Sale staff member happily chatted with us while giving us first dibs on a cart she had just hauled out. We both found more books here than in the other shops. And there’s a bunny. We petted the bunny. I didn’t catch his name. I called him bunny.

There’s good book stuff in downtown Lexington, Virginia. When we do it again, I think the best order is Downtown, then the library, then head to The Bookery. And we eat before The Bookery, but I already covered that.

Thanks, Lexington. And thank you to the very special souls that keep independent bookstores alive and the simple civilized thrill of the book hunt going strong.

1. Cover photo by Author. The Bookery interior. Lexington, Virginia.

2. The Bookery exterior, Lexington, Virginia. Photo by Author.

3. Downtown Books, interior, Lexington, Virginia. Photo by Author.

4. Children sign, Downtown Books, Lexington, Virginia. Photo by Author.

5. The Historian's Books, Lexington, Virginia. Photo by Author.

6. Rockbridge Regional Library, Lexington, Virginia. Photo by Author.

7. Front desk area, Rockbridge Regional Library, Lexington, Virginia. Photo by Author.

© Copyright William Hazel, 2025