After several months of intensely self-studying Spanish, I decided to try to find some native language books or magazines to use for reading practice. I thought that in Los Angeles, a city with latino population measured in the several millions, I'd be able to find some kind of book shop catering to Spanish speakers. But I never did. The most promising place -- Libreria Mexico de Echo Park -- appeared to be out of business when I went by one afternoon. I asked a few native speakers near the shuttered bookshop where else I might be able to find books and nobody had any suggestions. But maybe they just didn't want to talk to a crazy gringo.
If anybody knows a good place to browse and buy spanish language books in the LA area, I'd love to know about it.
Same experience for me here in San Francisco. Easy to find good bookstores for Chinese, for Japanese, and for Korean, but almost nada for Spanish, and asking local Spanish speakers about it elicited shrugs. Ask about telenovelas, and you've got plenty of opinions, but plain old novelas, nope, so the crazy gringo part doesn't seem to matter.
I had my best luck at Barnes & Noble, believe it or not. They had a pretty good Spanish language fiction selection--bigger than any other I found on the SF Peninsula. It's not what I was looking for (I was more interested in nonfiction), but it's all I found.
Have you tried Barnes & Noble? In my small town in Washington, not exactly a hot bed of Spanish speaking, B&N has a pretty big Spanish section, so I'd expect similar elsewhere.
I've looked in big book chains before, and while they always have some stuff the selection is pretty small: often best sellers and religious books only. I'd like to find a shop specializing in spanish language because I think they'd have a broader selection of topics, hopefully including some interesting nonfiction.
I know these books exist because I see them in online shops based out of Europe, but I'd like to avoid paying the high exchange rate + shipping to get books all the way from overseas.
"I've looked in big book chains before, and while they always have some stuff the selection is pretty small: often best sellers and religious books only. "
Why does this doesn't surprise me...
Well, here it goes: look for a "Instituto Cervantes" maybe they have an attached bookshop (and Library)
Of course, but I still find bookstores more pleasant than Amazon for general browsing. So if there's a brick and mortar location with a lot of spanish books in LA, I'd like to check it out.
There's a yearly book fair, LéaLA (http://www.lea-la.com/). If you're willing to cross the border, Gandhi (http://gandhi.com.mx/index.cfm/id/f:corporativo-sucursales; click where it says Tijuana) is the best bookstore chain in Mexico; although it is apparently prospering, I couldn't say with a straight face that it is actually good.
Don't believe anything you read on either of those pages without double checking.
If anybody knows a good place to browse and buy spanish language books in the LA area, I'd love to know about it.