OXFORD, Miss. — On any given day, Square Books is full of customers who are pursuing thousands of books. Many of them were written by locals, like William Faulkner.
Square Books opened in 1979 in an upstairs location on the Oxford Town Square and moved in 1986 into what was formerly a drug store. Now there’s two more locations, Square Books Junior and Off Square Books.
“It’s probably the best bookstore in Mississippi. It’s got one of the best selections of any bookstore I’ve been too,” Ole Miss student Parker Galloway said.
You’re likely to find people from out of town at the bookstore as well.
New Jersey resident Chris Thomas found the store while getting his daughter signed up for Ole Miss.
“I came in here. I didn’t know about this bookstore, and when I walked out I said, ‘I’m sure that’s a famous bookstore.’ I looked it up online, and I saw it was one of the top 10 bookstores in the country,” he said.
Now, the bookstore is celebrating being opened for 40 years.
“Going into a bookstore and accidentally finding a book that you didn’t know you wanted, that’s much harder to do in the virtual and digital world,” CEO Lyn Roberts said.