If you’re in San Diego and you love books, you shouldn’t miss the 3800 block of Fifth Avenue in Hillcrest. Since the closing of all but one bookstore on Adams Avenue, this has become book central for San Diego. While it still existed, the San Diego Book Festival moved from Adams Avenue to this block.

Alas, the book festival is no more, as far as I can tell. But these two great bookstores still face each other across the street. If this is your first time there, you’ll likely spend a good part of your day, if not your entire day, in this area.

Bluestocking Books is the smaller of the two. In the front, next to the long checkout counter, is a fine collection of cookbooks. On the right, children’s and humor books set up centrally to draw the attention of kids. Elsewhere, they have a well-curated collection of history, sociology, and counter-culture. And in the back a very nice collection of science fiction/fantasy and classics of literature.

They’re very friendly; if you need something and you’ll be in the area for a while, they will happily order it.

Across the street, Fifth Avenue Books¹ is large, spacious, and well-organized, and they also have a very good selection of science fiction, fiction, and history, as well as cookbooks and art and quite a bit more. They run a bit more expensive than I normally like, but that’s mainly because they know what they have. I found two Jack Vance books I wanted to read on my latest visit. Eyes of the Overlord for six bucks and The Dying Earth for five. I ended up getting the latter, because it had a cooler cover and was a buck cheaper.

I’ve also picked up a whole bunch of Lovecraft here in their backroom, and several nonfiction books in the front shelves.

Seeing Lawrence Block’s^• Telling Lies for Fun & Profit^• on the list reminds that, not on the list, I picked up his wonderful Writing the Novel^• here long ago, loaned it to a friend and never saw it again.² That book was part of the inspiration I needed to actually finish my first novel.

As with the other San Diego bookstore I’ve reviewed, the low purchase count is not because these aren’t great bookstores, but because I started shopping here long before I started keeping my database. I moved into Hillcrest, a few blocks away from these bookstores, on New Year’s Day 1999. I didn’t start my book database until about 2010.³ That’s also why there is a preponderance of cookbooks in this list. It isn’t that these stores specialize in cookbooks (though they each have a very nice selection), but that I started the cookbook database in AppleWorks over a decade before I started the general book database that powers these reviews.

There is also a lot more in this neighborhood. If you’re a fan of vinyl or just love purchasing music, around the corner on Sixth Avenue is Record City, a very friendly, reasonably-priced record store with a nice selection of vinyl and some CDs as well. If you need a hat, walk around to Fourth Avenue for the Village Hat Shop.

And, if you’re a walker, don’t forget Footnote Books several blocks down University.

When you’re hungry, look for Alexis Greek Café, Pho Fifth Avenue, Tandoori Hut, Hong Kong Restaurant, or Khyber Pass to relax with your finds. There are also dozens, literally, of other great places to eat in walking distance of these bookstores. It’s the center of the Hillcrest community.

If, somehow, you don’t spend the entire day looking at books and records, you’ll probably still spend the remainder of your day here, eating, shopping, or just wandering.