Book’em

Intelligent staff can give you good recommendations. Many, many books stuffed into a tiny store. The more the merrier in my opinion! I also know these guys have donated to Kitsap Humane Society and are involved in other charitable things.

Exploration — the one aspect of the bookstore experience that no digital medium has ever replaced. The unique sense of wandering the shelves, pulling a random title down and flipping through its pages, musing over its cover. Perhaps you put it back and move on, perhaps it gets added to a growing pile of books you plan to read. But it’s an experience that nobody — not Amazon or anyone else — has been able to replicate.
The tiny, easy to miss Port Orchard bookshop Book ‘Em has that experience nailed.
Like all my favorite bookstores, Book ‘Em. is bigger on the inside. On my last visit, I heard the figure of 80,000 books on the shelves thrown out, but to look at the little space from the outside it’s hard to believe it. Once you walk in, though — then you’ll see.
Every available inch of wall space is packed floor-​to-​ceiling with books — hardcovers and paperback, all used. There’s a small display are near the front for new arrivals, and where you make your purchases and trade-​ins, but once you start delving more deeply into the store, you immediately know where all those books are hidden.
There’s books along each wall, small rooms devoted to mystery or history or science fiction or religious books. The books on the shelves are neatly kept in alphabetical order, but there’s also often books along the floor or stacked along the tops of other books. It’s sometimes cramped and always smells like a bookstore should — like paper and words and the magic mixture of ideas old and new. Trade-​ins are quick and easy (though no more than 20 books at a time) and old-​school — credit is kept on notecards near the front of the store. The prices on the books are quite reasonable, and the trade-​ins always fair (and often generous).
If it sounds a little chaotic, it is — you have to be willing to explore a little, to not just open your eyes but to look up and down and maybe behind you. Some sections are very specific, others very broad. If you’re looking for something specific, the always-​friendly staff can probably tell you if they have it and where it would be. For someone like me, though, the joy is in the discovery, and that makes Book ‘Em a joyful place indeed.
Whether I’ve got something specific in mind or not, I nearly always find something at Book ‘Em that grabs my attention. I can spend 30 minutes or more and still feel like there’s more to see. That sense of discovery, of exploration, of a place bigger on the inside, is very much alive and well in this bookshop, and I’ll keep coming back because of it.

I ordered a book (Norman Davies’ «Europe: A History» — a 1400pg monster of a thing) from them via ABE. They emailed me that they were shipping media rate. I got the book next day.
Yes, it’s only across the Sound, but that’s pretty amazing.

Great used book store for the area! The staff was friendly and very helpful. It didn’t hut that their prices were affordable, along with there special they had going on.
Coming from Long Beach, CA and having left Acres of Books (now gone), this is nice to have in the Kitsap area (on the smaller scale).