The Tattered Cover

Now that it’s summer, I’m hoping to do a lot of blogging and catching up on old blogs I’d meant to write but didn’t. This is one of them.

A year ago I visited Colorado, where my college roommate grew up, and asked her to take me to The Tattered Cover – a bookstore she had always described as one of her favorites. She actually took me to two of their locations in the Denver area: one located in Littleton (my roommate’s hometown), and the other in Denver on Colfax Ave. Already, the experience was was exciting, because as we drove up to the Littleton location, we spotted this:

Being a fan of Junie B. Jones as a kid, I was quite excited to see that the Stupid Smelly Bus actually exists! Turns out, the store was having a Junie B. Jones book event that week. Pretty cool timing. The store inside was very spacious, complete with plenty of cushy armchairs for reading, a cafe, and even a section of book-ish gifts (that aren’t actual books), like library card-themed pencil cases, author card games, etc. I can see why my roommate loved the store so much. Even the bathrooms walls were literary:

Their Denver location on Colfax street is probably one of the coolest bookstores I’ve ever been in simply because of its location: it is housed in an old theater. A place that combines my two life passions into one!? The Tattered Cover celebrates the fact that the bookstore is an old theater by having “The Stage” area marked with a sign, and some of theater seats left in the audience for you to sit and read. It’s a terrible picture, but here’s a look:

The other thing I really like about The Tattered Cover is that not only is it is extremely well-stocked, but they also sell both new and used books. So really, the options are endless. Being a fresh-out-of-college student, my haul only included one book (Introducing Critical Theory: A Graphic Guide), and a mug. But the experience was enough to have this particular store on my list of unique bookshops I’ll remember visiting.

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