Favorite Bookstores for Christmas Shopping

Books are my favorite Christmas presents, both for giving and getting. For me, the best part of Christmas day is lounging in front of the tree after all the fuss is over, stacking up the books, and flipping through each one, imagining the fun of reading them all. Add a crackling fire and a hot buttered rum, and I am in Christmas heaven. This year, the books I am giving as gifts came from three places: 1) Amazon: I am a big amazon.com shopper because it is convenient, inexpensive, and they ship for free. But I am not a good on-line browser, so I use amazon to buy specific books for specific people. Hubby's Christmas books came from amazon, because he gave me a list of what he wanted. 2) Powell's: One of the very best things about living in Portland is Powell's. So every Christmas I make at least a couple of visits to the City of Books. I go there to browse for books for local friends for whom I do not have a particular book in mind. I got a present for my boss from Powell's. 3) Second Hand Prose: The Friends of the Oregon City Public Library runs my favorite used bookstore, Second Hand Prose (in the Oregon City Antique Mall). I was there to day and very excited to find that they have doubled the space and the inventory. They meet all my requirements for used books: good selection, especially of literary fiction; excellent, clean condition and mostly donated, not ex-library editions; and low prices, with most hardbacks at $2 and most paperbacks at $1. Immediate family members are getting books from S.H.P. because I think they would like a big stack of books to read through the winter. Now I must get to wrapping!