Chop Suey Books - Richmond, Virginia

Reader, I found it. My favorite bookstore . . . so far. Meet Chop Suey Books in Richmond, Virginia.

It was a serendipitous sort of find. There wasn't a lot of purposeful precipitation in going to Richmond—it was an easy distance between other stops. We only ended up on Cary St. because there was a good cafe to work in nearby. And then there it was, a bookstore across the street that looked like a comic strip. 

In short, Chop Suey Books found me.

As a frequent bookstore visitor and book news fiend, I am often familiar with the books that staff pick out to highlight. Chop Suey surprised with with a slew of recommendations that were both unfamiliar  and made me stop and read. After minutes within the store, I found four books selected by staff that felt picked out just for me (or Meaghan-baiting): Sleepless by Sarah Vaughan and Leila Del Duca, Riddance by Shelley Jackson, Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll by Peter Bebergal, and The Vorrh by Brian Catling (I'm not sure how I missed this last one for so long). This bookshop demanded my attention as soon as I arrived.


Chop Suey is a cozy library-cum-punk basement.  The first floor houses all new books—from fiction to nonfiction to children's—while the second floor, up a narrow staircase with lime green walls to a labyrinthine attic of used books.

This place was just cool. I could have stayed for hours and chatted with the staff about reading. My partner felt it, too. After perusing for a half hour, he actually told the owner that this was his favorite bookstore that he'd visited. We both fell hard and fast.