The Best Fictional Bookstores

Electric Literature has a delightful piece about the best bookstores in movies and books. People who write books love bookstores, and the ones they imagine are very enticing. “You’ve Got Mail” is all about bookstores, and this one is perfect — and just about to disappear. I’m sorry to say that I am pretty sure the big bookstore driving her out of business has probably since been itself eclipsed by Amazon.

Humphrey Bogart visited a bookstore that didn’t have what he was looking for in “The Big Sleep.”

Audrey Hepburn got her first kiss from Fred Astaire in a bookstore in “Funny Face.”

Certainly the movies’ most unusual bookstore scene was this one filmed backwards in “Top Secret!”