Description:

Residents in Charlottesville, VA love to read and love books.  We even host the Virginia Book Festival every year since it’s inception. That’s how much this town loves books.

Charlottesville has many new and used bookstores to peruse until you find just the right book to take home with you.  Our favorite general trade bookstore is the New Dominion Bookshop.  It has served the Charlottesville are since 1924 and is the oldest independent bookshop in Virginia. It has all the current fiction and non-fiction, plus a large selection of landscape and architecture books.  Their collection is impressive.

The store reminds me of the bookshop in the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movie “You’ve Got Mail” – the one Meg Ryan ran and Tom Hanks wanted to close.   It has a very friendly atmosphere, it is comfortable and inviting to peruse the stacks of books.  The staff is incredibly helpful and once you’ve been there a few times they remember you and call you by name.  They even know what new books to recommend based on what you’ve purchased before.  They have authors reading from their works and local authors in for book signings.

Yes, we have the big box Barnes & Noble store here in town (which is always busy) but you must look for this exciting independent bookshop for a real feel of Charlottesville’s love of books.