Capitol Hill Books & Eastern Market

Today K. and I went down to check out Eastern Market which is located just in the SE a few blocks behind the Capitol building. It turned out to be a great place the likes of which I have been looking for in DC. There is a fairly large main building with carniceros, fishmongers and vegetables. On Sundays, surrounding the building, are flea market stalls with a lively and wide variety of stuff for sale.


Just across the street I saw another used bookseller, Capitol Hill Books (657 C St. SE 202-544-1621). As you can see, this is one of those well stocked bookstores. There are 2 floors that are literally packed floor to ceiling (even the bathroom has a section!). Now I know that I complained about poorly organized shops in a previous post but here there are no pretentions about what you are getting. If you want to find something then grab a ladder and start hunting.

Unfortunately, I only had a half hour to look around and so, once again, it was to the sci-fi and crime sections I went. The former is relatively small but it looked like there might be potential for a few finds in there. There is a whole room devoted to hardcover and paperback mystery that I could have spent at least another couple of hours in. There are a lot of good looking editions of pulp paperbacks that are often marked as "first edition" and consequently jacked up in price - a practice I don't approve of.

I picked up a paperback called Murders' Row by Donald Hamilton. I got it because of the great tag line on the cover: MATT HELM - as tough an operative as ever crushed a Russian spy's kidney with a crowbar






All in all, a really fun store that I will definitely be making my way back to.