I have a theory that you can judge a civilization by its bookshop cafes. Not its libraries, though those matter too. Not its chain bookstores with their loyalty programs and corporate coffee. I mean the independent bookshops that have a cafe tucked inside, the ones where the espresso machine sits fifteen feet from a shelf of poetry collections and the people working behind the counter actually read the books they sell.

Over the past few years, the ScrollWorks team has visited dozens of these places. Some were planned stops on book tour routes. Others we stumbled into on weekends or vacations. A handful became places we return to regularly, not because we need a book or a coffee but because the combination of the two, in the right environment, produces something that neither one can accomplish alone.

What follows is not a ranked list. I don’t believe in ranking bookshop cafes, partly because the criteria are too personal and partly because the experience depends so much on when you visit, what you’re reading, and what kind of day you’re having. These are simply the places that left the strongest impression on us.

The Spotty Dog Books & Ale, Hudson, New York

I need to be upfront about something: The Spotty Dog is technically a bookshop and bar, not a bookshop and cafe. They serve beer and wine alongside the books. I’m including it anyway because it does what a great bookshop cafe does, which is create a space where browsing and lingering feel like the whole point rather than a prelude to a transaction.

Hudson is a small city in the Hudson Valley that went through a dramatic transformation over the past couple of decades, from a rough post-industrial town to a destination for antique dealers and weekenders from New York City. The Spotty Dog sits on Warren Street, the main commercial strip, in what used to be a fire station. The high ceilings and open floor plan give it a feeling of airiness that most bookshops lack. You can sit at the bar with a local IPA and flip through a used copy of something you’ve been meaning to read, and nobody looks at you like you should buy it or leave.

What I liked most about The Spotty Dog was the curation. The selection felt personal, like someone with strong opinions had chosen every title. There were no dump bins of bestsellers, no “if you liked this, try that” shelf talkers generated by an algorithm. Just books that someone thought were worth reading, organized with a logic that rewarded browsing.

We visited on a Thursday afternoon in October, when the town was quiet and the leaves along the river were turning. I bought a collection of essays by John McPhee and a pint of cider, and I sat reading until the light through the windows turned golden. That kind of afternoon is hard to manufacture. It requires a place that doesn’t rush you.

Shakespeare and Company, Paris

Yes, I know. Everyone includes Shakespeare and Company on lists like this. I almost left it off for that reason, because recommending it feels about as original as recommending that people visit the Eiffel Tower while they’re in Paris. But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t earn its spot.

The cafe is technically separate from the bookshop, occupying the space next door. You order at the counter, find a seat (good luck if it’s a Saturday afternoon), and look out at Notre-Dame through the window. The coffee is fine. It’s not the best coffee I’ve had in Paris, and Paris is not short on excellent coffee. But the experience of drinking it in that particular spot, surrounded by people who came here because they love books, is genuinely special in a way I can’t fully explain.

The bookshop itself is famously cramped and disorganized in the most charming possible way. Narrow staircases lead to tiny rooms stuffed with books. There are beds tucked into corners where the “Tumbleweeds,” the aspiring writers who volunteer at the shop, sleep in exchange for a few hours of work. The whole place feels like it was designed by someone who cared more about literature than fire codes.

I visited three times over two days during a trip in 2022. The first time, I was overwhelmed by tourists and left after twenty minutes. The second time, early on a weekday morning, the shop was nearly empty and I spent two hours moving from room to room, pulling books off shelves and reading first paragraphs. The third time, I sat in the cafe with a croissant and watched the river. Each visit was a different experience, and the early morning one was worth the trip to Paris by itself.

Powell’s City of Books, Portland, Oregon

Powell’s is often called the largest independent bookshop in the world, and while I haven’t verified that claim, I believe it. The store occupies an entire city block in Portland’s Pearl District. It’s divided into color-coded rooms. It has its own map. You can get genuinely lost in it, and I have, more than once.

The cafe inside Powell’s is a partnership with World Cup Coffee, a Portland roaster, and the coffee is noticeably better than what you get at most bookshop cafes. I had an oat milk latte that was excellent, which sounds like a small thing but matters more than you’d think when you’re settling in for two or three hours of browsing.

What sets Powell’s apart from other large bookshops is the mix of new and used books shelved together. You’ll find a brand-new hardcover of the latest novel sitting next to a battered paperback of something published in 1987, and the used copy might cost four dollars. This creates a kind of egalitarianism on the shelves that I really appreciate. Old books and new books compete on their merits, not their marketing budgets.

I spent an entire afternoon in the Gold Room, which is where they keep the science fiction and fantasy. I left with eight books and a coffee cup ring on my notebook from where I’d been scribbling recommendations to myself. If you’re the kind of person who makes lists of books to read later, bring a bigger notebook than you think you’ll need.

McNally Jackson, New York City

McNally Jackson has several locations now, but the original on Prince Street in Nolita is the one I keep going back to. It’s a mid-sized shop with an excellent cafe that serves pastries from local bakeries and espresso drinks that would hold their own in any dedicated coffee shop in the city.

The thing I love about McNally Jackson is the staff recommendations. They’re handwritten on index cards and tucked into the shelves, and they’re consistently good. Not “good” in the sense of recommending obvious bestsellers, but good in the sense of introducing you to books you’ve never heard of that turn out to be exactly what you needed to read. I’ve discovered more books through McNally Jackson staff picks than through any review publication or social media account.

The cafe seating faces the street, so you can people-watch while you read, which in Nolita is practically a contact sport. On a warm afternoon with the door propped open and a stack of new purchases on the table, McNally Jackson is one of the best places to be a reader in New York City. The competitive set is fierce, obviously. New York has a lot of great bookshops. But McNally Jackson wins on the cafe experience specifically because it treats the coffee and food as seriously as it treats the books.

Bart’s Books, Ojai, California

Bart’s is an outdoor bookshop, which means it doesn’t have a cafe in the traditional sense. What it has is a courtyard full of bookshelves open to the sky, shaded by oak trees, with a little area where you can sit and read. There’s a coffee shop across the street. The unofficial practice is to buy your coffee there and bring it to Bart’s, where nobody minds at all.

The honor system at Bart’s is what makes it remarkable. The shelves that face the street are accessible 24 hours a day. If you find a book after the shop is closed, you put your money in a slot in the door. This has been the system since the 1960s, and it still works. I find that incredibly heartening in an era when every other retail experience involves surveillance cameras and anti-theft tags.

Ojai itself is beautiful, a small valley town surrounded by mountains that turn pink at sunset. Visiting Bart’s during the golden hour, with the light filtering through the trees and the smell of old books mixing with the dry California air, is one of those experiences that stays with you. I bought a water-damaged copy of a Raymond Chandler novel for two dollars and read the first three chapters sitting on a bench under an oak tree. It was perfect in the specific way that only imperfect things can be.

Daunt Books, Marylebone, London

Daunt Books is organized by country rather than by genre, which sounds confusing until you experience it and then it seems like the only sensible way to organize a bookshop. Want a novel set in Japan? Go to the Japan section, where you’ll find it shelved alongside travel guides, histories, and essay collections about the country. This organization turns browsing into a kind of armchair travel, and it means you discover connections between books that a conventional genre-based system would hide.

The Marylebone High Street location is the original, housed in a beautiful Edwardian building with long oak galleries, skylights, and a back room that feels like a cathedral dedicated to reading. There isn’t a cafe inside the shop itself, but there’s a wonderful one directly adjacent that shares the entrance, and the line between the two spaces is pleasantly blurred.

I visited on a rainy Tuesday in February, which I think is the optimal condition for a London bookshop. The rain outside made the interior feel warmer and more inviting, and the shop was quiet enough that I could stand in the back gallery and just look at the architecture for a while without being in anyone’s way. I left with a novel set in Turkey and a history of cartography that I never would have found in a conventionally organized store, because I wouldn’t have known to look for it.

Tattered Cover, Denver, Colorado

The Tattered Cover has moved locations several times over the years, and its current home on Colfax Avenue is excellent. It’s a big shop, spread over multiple floors, with comfortable chairs scattered throughout and a cafe that takes up a significant portion of the first floor. The message is clear: sit down, stay a while, we’re not in a hurry and neither should you be.

I appreciate the Tattered Cover because it feels like a community center that happens to sell books. There’s always an event happening or about to happen. Local reading groups meet there. Authors do signings and talks. The bulletin board near the entrance is covered with flyers for writing workshops, poetry readings, and book clubs that meet in people’s living rooms around the city.

The cafe serves solid food along with coffee, which matters when you’re planning to spend several hours in the building. I had a sandwich and a pot of tea and read the first hundred pages of a novel I ended up loving, all without anyone giving me the side-eye for occupying a table too long. That’s the test of a good bookshop cafe, really. Not the quality of the coffee, though that helps. It’s whether the space communicates, through its design and its staff and its general atmosphere, that you’re welcome to stay.

Why These Places Matter

I spend a lot of time thinking about where people encounter books. As a publisher, this is partly professional interest. But it’s also personal. The circumstances in which you discover a book shape your relationship with it. A book recommended by an algorithm feels different from a book you pulled off a shelf because the cover caught your eye while you were drinking an espresso in a warm, well-lit room.

Bookshop cafes create the conditions for what I think of as accidental discovery. You go in with no particular agenda. You browse. You pick things up and put them down. Eventually, something catches your attention, not because it was marketed to you or because it appeared in your social media feed, but because you happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right frame of mind. That kind of discovery is becoming rarer as more of our reading choices are mediated by screens and algorithms, and the places that still enable it are worth protecting.

I’m not naive about the economics. Independent bookshops are struggling. Cafes help, because they give people a reason to walk through the door that isn’t strictly about buying a book. Some people come for the coffee and leave with a novel. Some people come for the novel and stay for the coffee. Either way, the cafe turns the bookshop from a store into a destination, and destinations survive in ways that mere stores often don’t.

If you have a bookshop cafe near you that you love, go there this week. Buy a book and a coffee. Sit for an hour. Tell someone about it. These places persist because people choose to keep them alive, one visit at a time.

For more of our recommendations and reading lists, visit our books page or check out what we’ve been publishing lately on the ScrollWorks blog.

Written by the ScrollWorks Media editorial team. Opinions are our own, caffeine levels may vary.