If you’ve ever uttered the sentence, “I could spend hours in a bookstore,” then get yourself to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s Midtown Scholar posthaste. The massive, multilevel bookshop and café is perfect for whiling away hours browsing spines.

The main level of the shop features the coffee bar and a series of shelves categorized by popular authors, with an offshoot room full of children’s books and a cake and pie café. From there, shoppers can go up or down to explore room after room of new and used titles in a large variety of genres. 

Deep within the labyrinthine shop is an underground rare books and prints section with multiple rooms full of vintage and hard-to-find selections. A Book Barn section offers “Books by the Foot,” which gives shoppers discounts based on the height of their stacks of purchases. 

Heading back up to the upper level, you’ll find thousands more titles and take in the gorgeous views of the shop’s large mural and the main floor.

The sheer size, the unique and carefully cultivated shopping experience, the décor, and the food and beverage sidelines make this place one of my favorites on my Pennsylvania bookshop crawl, but it’s the impressive selection that really brought it all home. I managed to find several of the titles on my wish list by the time I left – admittedly hours after I arrived!

The Midtown Scholar is located at 1302 North Third Street, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Open Thursday through Sunday.

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