Ystwyth Books

Ystwyth Books — Llyfrau Ystwyth in Welsh — is the kind of secondhand bookshop people cross the country for: ninety thousand titles over two floors on a side street in Aberystwyth, deep and idiosyncratic in the way only decades of careful accumulation can produce. Terry and Halcyon Hinde founded it in 1977, and Martin Ashby owns and runs it now, keeping it what it has always been — a browsing shop, mostly used and out-of-print, where the pleasure is finding the thing you didn't know you were looking for. It is regularly called the best bookshop in Wales, and while Hay-on-Wye has more of them, Ystwyth may be the single finest room. Aberystwyth is a university and seaside town with a bookish soul, and this is its literary heart. Give it an afternoon and low expectations of leaving empty-handed; the shelves have a way of deciding what comes home with you.