Jackson Street Books

To me what makes a town a town is its bookstores. You can’t just have a Barnes n Nobles or Borders and still be a good town. You have to have a store with local charm, namely a used bookstore. In Athens, Jackson Street Books is that store. So many others have come and gone but Jackson Street is here to stay. Jackson Street Books is the only used bookstore in Athens since the closing of Blue Moon. There is another out in Winder, but I don’t recommend it. The reason it has been around so long is because its such a good store. Its not a large book store, but it’s not small one either. They have decent prices and just about anything you would want, unless you're into very rare and hard to find books. That doesn’t mean they won’t have it, if its rare or hard to find, they’re just not as likely to have it.

The titles are organized pretty logically into categories, -Scifi, mystery, gardening, literary, biography, war books, etc. Basically they have whatever people in Athens buy and sell, and a few rare oddities or books that people ask them for. They get a lot of their books from people who trade books for credit. There are plenty of university students trying to pass off a good book they didn’t like for beer money, so there’s usually a good selection. They also trade and sell CD’s and DVD’s but they don’t have many of those.

One of the other nice things about this bookstore is that they trade books. If they don’t have anything you want right away you can get a coupon good for future purchases. Their system is a little skewed though... Sci Fi and gardening are listed as academic, while mystery and history are listed as popular. This is important because you can only trade like for like. They also buy books (but you don’t get as much for them) so if you need the cash or whatever you can do that as well.

Wuxtry

This is a nice local CD store . They have a good selection of local and used records and cd's. They have the biggest selection of records in town, some of which have never been opened. They have everything from Janis Joplin to Bob Dylan to Count Base to Johnny Cash to the Rolling Stones to motorcyle sound effects to some more recent local bands. Basically they have anything you can think of on record. They certainly don't have every record ever recorded, but they do have a good number. Some of the prices are a little non-sensical, but still pretty decent.

They also have new and used CD's, but they have more used than new. They've been around for a good number of years now. It's a cool little place but sometimes its hard to find what your looking for because it can be organized in an unusual way.