Labyrinth Books — Attraction in Princeton

Pretty good bookstore overall, but I miss when the University had its own bookstore, rich with academic books, particularly with respect to the sciences and mathematics.

The sciences are OK here, certainly better than a chain store like B&N (Einstein, Einstein, Hawkin, Dawson, Hawkin, Neil Degrasse, Einstein, all for the "common" man). (B&N's takeover nationwide of university bookstores throughout the country has wrecked them all and stripped them of their individuality, and turned them into trinket shops.) In the Princeton University bookstore of old, you could go broke picking up titles about things that were entirely new to you, math, physics, and lots and lots and lots of great chemistry.. The treatment of chemistry at Labyrinth in particular is awful, pitiful actually. The science that is most important to our survival is represented by a few esoteric, and often outdated, books. Labyrinth did not pick up the slack overall from the loss of the University bookstore, and the math section, while good, is not even close to what the University bookstore had.

Labyrinth is an excellent bookstore though for historical topics and one of the best bookstores I've seen for books in foreign languages, and is particularly rich in German, Spanish and French titles, with a smattering of other languages as well.

I tried to do my Christmas shopping at Labyrinth, but I couldn't find parking in time to meet their 8 o'clock...

This bookstore is a cultural treasure and if I had written a review a year or so ago, it would have had a solid five star rating. I've deducted one star because in recent months they've drastically downgraded their selection of books in foreign languages. The large section upstairs has been replaced by a tiny selection downstairs among the used and rare books. I was told that they are not phasing out the foreign language section but it does seem pretty anemic at the present time. Sad that, even in a town such as Princeton, readers are depressingly monolingual. That said, the bookstore is a wonderful place for browsing. They constantly bring in new books of high quality and the used books are most interesting and various. You never know what might turn up. The staff are friendly and if they do not have a book in stock, they will make an effort to find a copy for you. In these post-literate times, Labyrinth is an...

I have shopped in many used bookstores in the Philadelphia/New Jersey/Delaware Valley area, and this was absolutely the BEST customer service I have ever experienced!

Every employee I came into contact with was friendly, and one guy stopped his stocking of the shelves and recommended and searched for for used books for me all over the store, for a genre I was interested in. Who does that????

I was interested in buying a signed copy of a book that they said on the internet was available, but when they checked, it had already been sold. Unfortunately, there is a lag between what is on the internet and real time. But the other experiences with their employees and finding some other great books overshadowed this "bummer"!

I had great experiences with every employee I came into contact with (about four or five of them),

I plan to return to the area, and DEFINITELY plan to be back to this...