For a city that somehow can't quite shrug off the accusation that nobody here reads, Los Angeles can lay claim to a lot of literary icons. Raymond Chandler made Los Angeles sexy and gritty; Nathanael West and Joan Didion made it seem desolate and morally bankrupt. And newly lionized patron saint of L.A. culture, Eve Babitz, made it seem cool. But there's another towering icon of books in L.A. that also just got its due, and it is in the company of some pretty heavy hitters.
1000 Libraries just announced the world's 10 most beautiful bookstores, and right there at No. 10, on the same list as Paris's Shakespeare and Co. and other storied international booksellers, is DTLA's own The Last Bookstore. Not bad for a bookshop that has only been operating out of its current location since 2011. And anyone who's been in it knows the truth of that ranking.
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Located on two floors in a cavernous, former bank building, it's not just one of California’s largest used-and-new bookstores; it’s an art installation, a temple to literature and a book influencer's grid-worthy dream, rolled into one. (Seriously, it's actually the most Instagrammed bookstore in the world.) "This place isn’t just about size—it has quality in spades, too, with loads of creative art displays, its most notable ones being a gravity-defying book tunnel made up of books and a cashier’s counter lined with hundreds of books’ leather spines," reads the ranking write-up over on 1000 Libraries.
The store's ambiance is breathtaking, but it's also a place that is just as much about the appeal of physical media, from books that you can bend and highlight and shelve to finding fresh new vinyl to bring home. The store buys, trades and even hosts workshops and gallery shows.
The picturesque bookseller is also one of L.A.'s great equalizers, appealing just as much to out-of-town tourists as to hardened locals. It's a place for anyone who craves an analog connection, the same things that people find in the list's fellow stunners, like New York City's Albertine Books or the Netherlands' Boekhandel Dominicanen, which took the top spot on the global ranking. The Last Bookstore just brings a little more modern, L.A. panache to such old-school pleasures.