Bookstore spotlight: Bookmaze

Book Store Spotlight

Bookmaze

Location: Mesa Arizona

Sells: Used books only

Pricing: cheap!

I lived a few miles from the Bookmaze and went there frequently. It’s gigantic. Everything in the center of the store is paperbacks. This would be the maze part. The bookcases are laid out like a maze, albeit a very easy one. They wind around each other mostly in S shapes. It sounds like it would be a clusterfuck but it’s actually easy to navigate.

The paperbacks are split into genre sections but it’s pretty iffy if it’s in the right spot. I’ve found horror in the sci-fi, men’s adventure in the general fiction, etc. So, it’s worth it to look through absolutely everything. Prepare to spend hours.

The biggest section is the Mystery/ Horror/ Thriller/ general fiction. This is the bulk of the paperbacks. When I first found this store, I pulled out stacks and stacks of 80’s horror. There was also a mass abundance of trashy 80’s crime books, old school Noir from the 50’s, titles like The Shadow and Doc Savage, classic bigger names like Agatha Christie and Anne Rice but older, less seen editions. Trashy books. Lot’s of just weird random paperbacks from the 50’s to the 70’s. Stuff I wouldn’t even really know how to classify.

There is a decent sized Western section. A Spy and Men’s Adventure section but you could find these in the general section also. There is a somewhat large Sci-fi and Fantasy. Lots of great old paperbacks. Nothing past the 2000s. A big romance section. A small paranormal romance section which also contains some of the B-smut books from the 50’s & 60’s. Here you’ll also find random stuff like Nick Carter books. Why aren’t the Nick Carter books in the spy/men’s adventure section? Who knows. This is why you must look at everything. There’s a big YA section in the back. A small literature section. A small movie novelization section but once again they are also peppered throughout the shop.

The walls have shelves to the ceiling, and this is where the hardcovers are. Let me tell you, I went to this place probably every other weekend for a year and never even got to the hardcovers. That’s how much paperback gold is there.

As for the pricing, the owner once told me he hates to look stuff up online so he doesn’t bother. Most of the paperback books are $2-$4. Sometimes they are marked and sometimes not. Usually I HATE when places don’t have the prices in the books but honestly here, it was no big deal. Anything over $4 has a price tag on it and a lot of the time when he’s pricing them at the counter he more often than not throws more books in the $2 pile than the $4. That being said, book condition isn’t a high priority at this store so you’re going to come across many beaten books. I’ve seen two copies of the same book, one destroyed, one in good condition priced the same. The owner also told me the bookstore wasn’t his main source of income. That’s what you want to hear. He’s a retired construction contractor and just wanted to be around books every day. One day he caught two scanners in the store and kicked them out! How cool is that?!

Some other random cool things: The bathroom is in the back of the store behind a movable bookcase. It’s like something out of a movie. He Epoxy coated the entire floor in this kind of splatter paint design. I love the way it looks.

They did start selling RPG and gaming stuff, which is the only brand new items in the shop. I like RPG and all that but I hope it doesn’t take over the bookstore because this bookstore is exactly the kind of place people who read this blog are looking for.

Unfortunately I didn't take too many pictures before I moved so these are all from online besides the ones with my wife and I in them. (She's the one dancing.)

spotlight by Nick Anderson. instagram: next_stop_willoughby