Tottenham Court Road and Charing Cross may be the book centers of London, but the Mecca for secondhand books in Britain is on the English/Welsh border. With more than 30 secondhand bookshops, tiny Hay-on-Wye bills itself as the "town of books."
Though the bookshops in Hay-on-Wye can be as vast as any Waterstones, they remain pleasantly haphazard and intimate. Most are converted houses with holes in their wooden floors, providing a rat's view of the underlaying mayhem. Books fill the fireplaces and run down the staircases and loft beams.
"The most aMAZEing bookshop in the world," says a sign outside Hay Cinema Bookshop. It stocks 200,000 volumes where a screen and plush seats must have once been. Most items hover in the 10 pound range, and reprinted classics can be had for a pound.
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