McIntyre & Moore Booksellers

Sadly, McIntyre & Moore became the latest area bookseller to close, ending their tenure in early June 2011. They now only sell books via their online shop. I hear that Curious George Goes to Wordsworth, the Wordsworth holdover in Harvard Square, is imminently closing as well.
I will miss being able to browse McIntyre & Moore in person. Given how many booksellers are closing, it seems I am alone in this, but I love the experience of browsing in-​person and finding things I wouldn’t have known to look for. Looking for a specific book online just isn’t the same as the experience of wading through the stacks at a used books shop.

The best used book store in the Boston area right now.
Cambridge used to be a hotbed of antiquarian bookshops and now they are gone, except M&M. Fewer readers, higher rent. When Avenue Victor Hugo died it was a sad day. Classics like the Starr Bookshop are just a distant memory. M&M is still hanging in there though and going strong with a web business and bricks and mortar. Their selection is the best in the area now. Also, they have even been upping their stock of high-​end scholarly stuff a little which is interesting. In general, the focus at M&M is on scholarly and science. Archaeology is strong and so is history. The business and economics section is getting pretty good too.
If you are not into antiquarian books go to Borders or something. This place is strictly for bookworms.
BTW, a lot of the reviews here are old when M&M was in Davis Square. That old location had some kind of bad chemical odor due to the previous tenant or something. They are now in Porter Square and the location is fine.

I rarely find something I actually want to buy here, but when something is to be found, it tends to be pretty cool. They have a great selection of some of the more unusual books, and some more rare books. I’m not entirely sure how to describe it, but it’s not your typical selection. The guy who works there is pretty funny, and always has something to say about books. You can tell this is what he loves.
In terms of used book stores, no one store is perfect, and there are reasons why you may not find what you are looking for here, but it’s a great stop along the way. Especially if what you’re doing is more browsing than searching for one particular book.
The new location is sort of a basement location on the western side of Porter Square. It’s not so bad. Plenty of space!

Can’t figure out how or why I haven’t reviewed this place. Great selection of quirky art books, and very strong in regional lit as well (e.g. history of police force in New Orleans in the 1800s). Their new location is in a basement, and it’s a very bad location — it’s not visible from the street and you need to go downstairs to find stuff. Otherwise it’s definitely worth a visit. Upstairs is the discount stuff of 60% (75% for 10+ books).

Can’t believe all the hating here! I haven’t been to M&M since the Porter Sq move, so the new location may suck, but over 5 years I visited pretty much every used book store in Boston, and this was always my favorite!
My bf and I have actually purchased enuf to get the discount-​by-​the-​foot once or twice (tho I did have to get a $ 3 thesaurus to put us over the top one of those times!)
No, it is not a reliable place to find a gently used copy of best-​selling fiction, but you’ve got the public library for that! I’ve uncovered some awesomely old books, some pre-​publication review copies, all kinds of fun stuff here. Staff is a bit aloof, but I’ve never needed them for much besides checking out, and they were always friendly about that. For poli sci, history, current events, and classics they have some good stuff.
If you want a book store that smells like books, rather than coffee, this is your spot!

I’m too fucking dumb to shop for books here. There aren’t any shiny objects or coffee stands to distract me and make me mindlessly hand over my credit card. I stopped by the front door where the kids books and cookbooks were located, showing my daughter pictures in the Latin Fiesta Party book for a good 5 minutes before I made my way back to the small fiction area and thumbed through «Sex and Marriage in Victorian Poetry». Too many words for me, not enough pictures.
My husband, on the other hand, was ecstatic that there books on cryptography and more smart shit that I rely on spellcheck to correct the names of for me. I like their manner of discounting books: a 1 foot stack saves you 10%, two foot, 15%, and so on. My question is if you buy 10 feet, do you save 100%? Oooh, see? I can think up mind fucking conundrums, too!
I’m glad to read that everyone else got the cold shoulder from the staff too. I just thought it was because they were super jealous because I’m so fucking hot and awesome.

M&M makes me want to cry. I have followed them from their Harvard Sq days to Davis Sq and now to Porter Sq in a location that seems totally doomed (there’s absolutely positively no parking whatsoever, and the space is a veritable dungeon). This is a city of book-​lovers, so something is horribly wrong when a place with this much good inventory just can’t succeed. What’s my diagnosis? First, they have horrible, dreadful, atrocious fiction. This has always been fine with me because I’m usually looking for academic texts, but this is a drawback for a lot of shoppers. Second, do they PAY the staff to be unfriendly? Is it a job requirement?! Third, can’t they do any of the things that bookstores do to make their shops comfortable and cozy: perhaps a chair here and there? Some decent lighting? Even some music? Something that signals «customer, please take a book fof the shelf, sit and read.» In this era of bookbuyers using the internet to buy books for dirt-​cheap, booksellers have to get smart about how they configure their stores. M&M is definitely not smart.

Fun place to find some useful books. Its not the cheapest, but it has a nice atmosphere and laid back staff. The books tend to be in great condition. I like to kill a few minutes here if I’m waiting for friends to meet me at restaurants in the area.
One thing to know, they have virtually no fiction selection here.

I «heart» books and finding a used book store with decent prices and great collection is a plus!
M&M has that old bookstore smell to it but is relatively well lit for browsing and perusal, which you definitely need to do since books may be organized a bit helter-​skeltered! Organized by casual (and sometimes cheap :) coffee table books upfront and then non-​fiction in the back.
It’s no Strand (in NYC) or Barnes and Noble but yet somehow it fits with the quaint charm of Davis Square. Location is quite accessible since it’s steps away from the T. Great for a quick stop anytime.

I haven’t reviewed this place yet? HOW CAN THAT BE?
Let me get this out of the way — they’re moving out of Davis very soon. So I’m writing this review as a walk-​in patron of their Davis location, which, by the way, is probably the best damn location in the Square, and why their rent was so exorbitant.
This store is a touch on the disorganized — nay, I’d say more just «disheveled» — but you can definitely find your way around. The sections up front are a treasure trove for those doing some gift shopping, you can score some sweet (and cheap) coffee table books, cook books, travel books. Keep going back and you find non-​fiction, lit crit, history history history. This is the abyss where you might get lost for hours and not be seen until closing time. And that’s ok, because that’s the beauty of this place.
My bookshelves are starting to warp from the weight of books I’ve discovered at McIntyre and Moore’s. Job well done!

I love wandering around this store. It’s old school and musty, bad lighting and few places to sit down with a book. Almost an anti– Borders/B&N. I still like it though. It veers from the usual selection of books, but it nice not to be met with a table full of chick-​lit and whatever books have been twisted into blockbuster screenplays once in a while.
Minus two stars for a tepid staff and the fact that they didn’t give me a job sophmore year.

One time I was in this store and heard a commotion in the back. I investigated, and I witnessed Gore Vidal screaming at some young couple for taking his photograph while they stood there awkwardly. If that doesn’t give a store street cred, I don’t know what does.
Also, I went there once for a really random Jerzy Kosinski biography, and they totally had it. What are the odds?

This was one of my favorite used bookstores when I lived in the Boston area, first in its location between Harvard and Central squares, and then when it relocated to Davis Square. On our recent visit, I had to show C., and then after bowling, I had to return to pick up a couple of choice titles.
The selection is awesome. They have a good selection of ‘60s, counterculture, and pop culture texts, and the amount of art books and philosophy they carry is impressive. Their poetry shelves are well stocked, if not scattered — most used poetry tends to be – and I’ve always found their fiction to be wanting.
But it’s a solid store, and smart. A great place to drop dime.

Not only does this place smell like a basement, but I feel like they have staff that look like «real people» walking around making sure I don’t steal anything. It’s annoying. Their books are old and smelly. They’re not nice to anyone.
Did I mention it smells?

First off, let me say that I am predisposed to LOVE used bookstores. They are the perfect place to lose yourself in a quiet, cool, and secluded atmosphere. That said, McIntyre and Moore is NOT one of these places.
The staff (or at least the ones I encountered) was incredibly rude. I saw a woman checking her bag at the entrance (a policy which they militantly adhere to) which had her laptop in it. She expressed anxiety over the care of her laptop behind the counter, which the staff person totally shrugged off, acting frustrated that she would even voice her concern.
After browsing their tragically uninteresting selection for about 15 minutes I approached the counter where an older gentleman in a blazer (another staff person) was reading the newspaper. I asked if they had a public restroom and without even looking up at me from reading, he snarkily said «Nextdoor…or you can use the street.»
To sum up: poor selection (seriously, you’re better off going across the street to Goodwill) + rude, snarky staff + no public restrooms = Josh won’t be back any time soon

Oh my god, this place smells like dead animals and feet. I know that some book stores have cats to chase away the mice but for the love of christ, wash your effing cat!
Now because of this I have never been able to spend more than a few minutes in this place. What I have noticed in my brief forays:
A good selection of non-​fiction books. Want an old crusty copy of some book about the Berlin Wall? Here’s your place. Looking for a cheap copy of A Handmaid’s Tale? Go back to brookline booksmith, please.

McIntyre and Moore isn’t great across all areas, but they have some pockets of unparalleled brilliance in here. I don’t know any other store, used or otherwise, that has an industrial history section, for example. The truly rare and/​or antiquarian items near the front inspire awe (where else do you find the 1987 MIT magnum opus Georges Bank?), and inexplicably they have a more thorough section on New York State history than any bookstore I’ve been to in New York (full set of the personal papers of Gov. George Clinton, anyone?). Fiction may be lacking, but who cares when their baseball section is so solid? Economics here makes me salivate.
If you want bookstores to hold your hand, entertain, or otherwise make life easy, this probably isn’t the store for you. You won’t find a lot of common stuff here, because they just don’t buy a lot of titles that flood the market that other used stores will fill up shelf space with four of. But for more obscure, high-​quality academic publishing, there’s no used bookstore in Greater Boston that compares.

Rejoice! (sort of…)
Word on the street is that McIntyre and Moore won’t be renewing their lease, and will be sent packing from their current locale by the end of the year. And while I can’t exactly applaud the loss — any loss — of any used bookstore, I’m not really going to be shedding a tear when the shutters are drawn down on M+M.
Something about the place was always just off — it always felt more of an antique shop than a bookstore, more the type of place you’d browse, but never buy, the merchandise. I think they could have succeeded if they’d wanted to, but a confluence of factors, including discouragingly high prices on books of dubious value, and discouragingly contemptuous and acerbic staff, probably made the closure inevitable. Bibliophiles are a gregarious and generous lot by nature, but M+M did all it possibly could to undercut this good natured spirit. It”s unfortunate, but entirely deserved.
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Previous review:
Dunno — I generally like my used book stores egalitarian, populist and messy. (Diskovery…sigh…). I’m not sure how they managed to accomplish it, but M+M managed to get somehow even MORE pretentious and exclusionist moving from Harvard up to Davis. They do have strong history, cultural studies and philosophy sections, I’ll given them that but their books seems are generally priced out of a reasonable range. And their literature/​poetry section is simply put, abominable.
Hey, but they do sell tickets to the Illuminations Tour, Somerville’s annual celebration of that triumph of American kitsch folk art, holiday lighting (highly recommended, and buy tickets sooner rather than later), so I guess they are not a totally waste.

In one trip I was able to find:
– The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (a really nice copy)
– Tractatus Logico Philosophicus by Wittgenstein
– Philosophical Investigations by Wittgenstein (hard to find in a _​new_​bookstore!)
I was suitably impressed. Their academic offerings are very good (better than Rodney’s) but worse than Raven’s.
My rating would have been better if they had a better fiction section (execrable selection) and stocked less crap. Most used book stores have issues with crap building up around the edges, so I can’t blame them too much.

Summary: This is the perfect place to browse if there is a long wait at Redbones, or you have some other reason to kill time in Davis Square.
Sadly, rents have driven many good used book stores out of the area. Fortunately, McIntyre and Moore found a new home in Davis Square when Harvard Square rents went sky high. This is a place for nerds and other book lovers. Like most good used book stores, it never seems to get fully organized, and what is organized goes by subject and the first letter of the author’s last name so it’s not easy to find specific books. Like Geoff said, if you are looking for a specific book, call.
The owner loves books, but he’s not trustworthy. I bought a book for 12 dollars there right before someone else got me a copy as a gift. I tried to return it for credit without the receipt. The owner studied the book suspiciously and said «there is no way to know where you got this.» He told the guy at the register to pay me two dollars for it if I wanted to sell The guy at the desk turned to me, looking very embarrassed and whispered, «I hate it when he does that. This is his hand writing in the book.» He gave me full credit.