Dog Ears Book Barn

Phenomenal. One of my top 5 favorite places in the world. Bring small bills and the owner will thank you :)

Love this place. Just across the street from Big Moose Deli & Country Store, down an alley/​driveway. Easy to miss but there IS a sign, so keep your eyes open and note limited hours. Bring cash or checks and use a restroom before you arrive (unless you want to go around behind the barn). So many wonderful books, reasonably priced, in so many categories. Floor to ceiling. First edition Henry Miller, Roy Chapman Andrews, kids’ books, space travel, art, etc., ad nauseam. Jeff, the owner, is a good guide and interesting fellow. Highly recommended. Always stop by on our way from NYC to VT. Don’t mind the barking dog. He’s harmless.

I called and asked if they were open. She said, «We’re here for two hours.» So I went and didn’t regret it one bit. Go often!

This place is legendary, but so hard to find I thought it must be out of business. I drove back and forth three times and was about to give up when I found it. Here’s what you do: As you’re driving east through Hoosick on Rt. 7, keep your eyes peeled at the intersection with Hill Rd. to the north and South St. to the south. There’s a big green tourist trap to your right that will vacuum up all your attention with its signs for Vermont maple products, pulled pork, and a million other things. If you can tear your eyes away from that, directly across the road is a small sign for Dog Ears. You turn left there and go down a skinny driveway to the barn at the back of the house where all the books are.
I can’t say much for the books sold here because, to be honest, antiquarian books are really not my thing. But friends of mine who do like that sort of thing adore this place. There is a slightly creepy basement full of paperbacks that is fun to explore, where I found a few bargains.

I live in Hoosick Falls, and I passed this place for years never knowing it was even in business, as so many places in this area start up and shut down within months. But one day a friend and I decided to check it out, and our lives and book collections haven’t been the same since.
The main building, as the other reviewer said, is a «converted» barn next to the owner’s house. When you open the door and walk up the steps, there are books upon books stacked off to the side, but that’s nothing compared to what you’ll get on the inside. The owner, a friendly, very knowledgable, elderly man usually greets you before you’ve even stepped in. Then you notice the following things all at once: the floor-​to-​ceiling, haphazard, borderline claustrophobic stacks of books; the classical music coming from a staticky radio; the big wood furnace straight ahead; and the SMELL. It’s not necessarily a bad smell for those of us who love old books, but it’s definitely got the musty, old paper smell. The barn is mostly unfinished, too – don’t expect this to look like a traditional bookstore by any means – no carpet, no paint on the walls, no sitting/​reading areas with end tables and decorative lamps, etc.
The owner will ask you if you’ve ever been there before or if you’re looking for anything in particular and then will tell you the general layout. The first area right at the «checkout» is mostly oversized coffee table books. The bottom floor runs through the most popular sections, clearly labeled with wooden signs – fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography, classic lit, suspense, mystery, travel, local history, culinary, pop culture, music, and a cute children’s section complete with a few very old stuffed animals. Most of the books on the first floor are hardcover; some of them are early editions very obviously showing their age (yellowing pages, a smell that almost never goes away), but none of them are in «bad» condition. Often you can find almost brand new copies of some books (esp. in the fiction section). It can take some time to get used to the setup, and you DEFINITELY need to watch your step because on the floor at the end of just about every aisle are STACKS of books that have no room for the shelves and/​or defy organization. Sometimes you have to move these stacks to search the shelves for the book you are looking for. Usually the ones in these random stacks are ones you’d never bother reading, but that’s a matter of taste!
Also downstairs is a rare/​first-​edition section of more expensive books, which I haven’t explored yet. For the collectors out there, I’m sure there’s something there for you.
There is a whole upstairs floor, too, one that’s only a little more spacious than downstairs. Up here you’ll find educational books and more specific topics — aviation, nautical, military, psychology, philosophy, zoology, linguistics, musical theory, ooooold college textbooks, pretty much anything you can imagine! Also there are some beautiful stained glass windows at the front of the barn upstairs which give one of the sections a nice glow.
As if that weren’t enough, there is an outside shed/​cellar where the 50-​cent paperbacks live. This is where you’ll find just about every book ever written, but more importantly for myself, this is where the Horror section is (the owner will gently tell you he doesn’t really consider this a worthwhile genre, but that’s OK with me). These paperbacks are definitely in fair to poor condition; some of them surely haven’t seen the light of day since their only reading in 1972, but I have found some rare/​out-​of-​print gems down there.
The owner (I wish I remembered his name!) is very willing to help you find anything. The last time I went I brought a list with me; he’d heard of just about every title/​author on the list and spent a good half hour finding as many titles as he could and kept the list to have one of his «students» help him search later in the week! He clearly LOVES books.
Only downside is there’s not much of a turnover – the books there this year are the ones there last year. Don’t expect much in the way of «new» books. And best-​selling titles/​authors don’t stay long.
The prices, usually written in pencil in the front cover, are sometimes a little high for books that aren’t in the greatest condition, but when you’re checking out (which entails the owner counting your books and assessing each one), often he will charge you less than the written price unless the book is in very good condition. I usually walk out of there with a bag full of maybe six books for $ 20.
The octogenarian owner and his cluttered, «vintage» bookstore are so cool, but at the same time they seem like something out of a Stephen King novel, and for that I love it! There aren’t normally more than one or two customers there at a time, and it just seems like the perfect, hidden place for creepy, ghostly things to happen. Someone should write a book about this place!

I cannot believe there hasn’t been a Unilocal about this bookstore yet. Leave it to your hero, Ryan H, to be the First To Review once again.
Dog Eared Books is easy to miss, but easy to find. If you’ve driven on Route 7 through the center of Hoosick, you’ve passed it. It’s just past the one traffic signal, across from the huge deli. It’s down a long narrow driveway to the small parking lot. The store itself is a converted barn, two stories made into a book lover’s paradise. As soon as you enter the front door, there are shelves stuffed to the gills surrounded by more wobbly freestanding stacks of books. It’s like this the whole way through. The old dude who works here sits in his little nook reading, usually has classical music going. At first you’ll be struck by the gigantic wood burning furnace in the middle of the room. It’s not just for show. In the colder months, the old dude runs it and the whole store smells like a campfire. It was a little disconcerting having a wood fire so close to so much paper in a wood barn, but I figure he’s been doing this long enough without fail, so why worry.
I feel like most books that have ever been in print are in this store. If you can dream it up, you can probably find it. There’s some modern books, but mostly older ones, some incredibly old. Keep your eyes to the top shelves, because that seems to be where the books from the 1700s are usually located. The prices are also very reasonable. I can’t decide whether the old dude prices them that way because profit is only a secondary motive for running the store (the first being a love of reading) or if it’s just that he hasn’t updated any prices in a decade or two. I picked up one of my favorite old books, The American Natural History from 1910 for just $ 30.
Kudos!