A Reader’s Guide to America’s Best Book Towns

Some places are built around books in a way you can actually feel in the day-to-day, not as a theme or a photo-op, but as part of how a town spends its evenings and keeps its main streets active.

If you’d like to build a trip where the itinerary practically writes itself, these are great starting points.

Oxford, Mississippi

Oxford earns its literary reputation the old-fashioned way: by showing up for writers and readers consistently.

Square Books, founded in 1979, sits right on the town square and has grown into a small family of shops that keeps author events and community programming at its center.

For history, Oxford’s connection to William Faulkner is part of the town’s identity, and many people pair bookstore time with a Faulkner stop. You can spend a morning browsing Square Books, then plan your afternoon around a campus walk at Ole Miss and a quiet hour with some Southern lit in hand.

Iowa City, Iowa

Iowa City is one of the strongest book towns in the country on paper and in practice. UNESCO designated it a City of Literature in 2008, making it the first U.S. city with that title, and the designation reflects a deep bench of reading and writing culture anchored by the University of Iowa.

If you’re visiting as a book lover, you can build your day around readings, literary programming, and the campus-linked writing culture. This is a town where “what to do tonight” often includes an author event, a workshop, or a reading series rather than a long drive to a big-name attraction.

Concord, Massachusetts

Concord is one of the most walkable literary history trips in America, because so much of it is concentrated in one small area.

Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House is the headline stop, known as the place where she wrote and set Little Women.

The best way to do Concord is slowly. You can tour Orchard House, then spend some time in town with the kind of reading you usually save for later. Concord’s appeal is that the book history isn’t abstract. It’s attached to rooms, desks, and daily life you can still step into.

Asheville, North Carolina

Asheville’s book culture is anchored by a single, very real force: Malaprop’s Bookstore and Café, an independent shop founded in 1982 that’s long been the center for readings and literary community in town.

Asheville is ideal if you’d like your book trip to include an author event and a little meandering between stops. You can start with Malaprop’s, check their events calendar, then plan the rest of the day around the neighborhoods nearby, since a reader’s day here is totally walkable.