Bookman's Alley in Evanston, IL

Todd and I recently visited the used bookshop Bookman's Alley in Evanston, Illinois. For those unfamiliar with the charming shop, it's pretty much like a museum inside, with interesting objects — armor, old military uniforms, paintings, gorgeous old desks that I coveted — filling every surface and corner.

Bookman's Alley isn't the sort of place to snag a $2 used paperback, but rather a place to go if you're able to drop $850 on a set of first edition Nathaniel Hawthorne novels. So while we left without buying anything, it was still fun to sift through boxes of old postcards and posters, try on old hats, and look at beautiful first editions.

Me leafing through Joseph Conrad's Victory, a novel that is sitting unread on my window shelf in D.C.