Bradley’s Books

Bradley has been selling books for decades and I have been buying his books for decades. His business has moved from Girard and Central (Mid Seventies) to Harvard Street to his current location.
He has been in business for decades because he knows how to get good books to his customers. The books are priced right, often in great shape and his sale rack is full of gems. There are also the unusual, the weird, the small edition, and the offbeat titles that interest buyers like me-​you won’t find these anywhere else. You will also find a nice variety of fiction, sci fi, non fiction, poetry and current books.
Bradley is a gentle soul, always cheerful and often jovial. These are the ingredients of a business that has been around for a long time and I am grateful to Bradley for what he offers.

Bradley, the owner and guy who runs the used bookstore at Winning, is insufferable and condescending. If he doesn’t like the literature you’re looking for, he’ll offend you by calling you, in so many words, a philistine. On top of that, his books are overpriced. I have a better suggestion for you: Go to Birdsong. By far, it is the best used bookstore in town, and the owners are super friendly.

Bradley’s Books is one of those unexpected little surprises one happens upon every so often.
It’s a three-​day-​a-​week bookstore inside of Winning Coffee. A first visit to Winning Coffee, one is probably expecting just coffee and something to eat, maybe some entertainment, but if that visit happens on the right day of the week, one will discover a corner devoted to a solid selection of used books mainly of the modern and Classic Literature genres, along with poetry and select nonfiction, including Eastern religion and thought, and philosophy.
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Bradley, along with one or two helpers, lugs in about 50 boxes of books (approximately 1,200 books), tucking into the corner where Winning Coffee houses its fresh coffee roaster. This collection of books is a small fraction of what Bradley houses in three storage units with roughly 12,000 books total. Many are repeats of the best and most popular titles.
Bradley’s Books is opened 10 a.m. until 4 p.m., but many days he’s ready to sell books earlier and tends to stay late, like this evening when he was helping customers close to 6 p.m. Like any bookstore, Bradley finds that he’s continuing to order more and more specialty books upon individual requests.
Bradley and his wife used to own Birdsong Bookstore, also a used bookstore, on Central Avenue SE. But after a devastating fire in 1997, they lost more than 70,000 books, they decided to sell the business to a former employee. The fire occurred early in the morning of the Summer Solstice.
Just recently, Bradley’s Books began accepting debit and credit cards.
Most of the books are offered at half of today’s retail prices.