Subiaco Bookshop

Love this place! Quaint and home-​y, with a good selection of books too. I probably spend way too much money here but I can’t help going back!

Over the years the big book chain stores have lost their souls (and some more recently their shirt). If you love old school book stores, Subiaco Book Shop is for you. Sitting in an older style building on Rokeby (just up from the renowned Witches’ Cauldron), with polished floorboards and high ceilings, this shop invites you in and encourages you to stay for a while, to browse and discover it’s hidden treasures.
Yes, they have the latest best sellers, but they also have a wide range of books — fiction, non fiction and kids. This place has books about things you probably never even dreamd of. If you are looking for something different, but not sure what, or looking for a specific book you haven’t been able to find in other Perth book stores ask the friendly and knowledgeable staff. They will happily recommend you a great read or can track down a title and order it for you
Stuck for a gift for those who have everything? Grab a gift voucher and give the joy of a good book. Or from my own experience if you need a gift for a little one, win points with their parents with a classic children’s book or a hardback from the next big thing. If you are clueless like me, the lovely ladies here will steer you in the right direction.

If Black Books, the store in the television series of the same name, had been an actual bookstore instead of a three-​walled set on a soundstage, it would have probably looked a bit like Subiaco Bookshop. Only darker and with more wine bottles about.
Subiaco Bookshop is actually very light, with bright yellow walls and large windows. But the general clutter – the feeling of being enveloped by books – is very much as it seemed to be Bernard’s eponymous emporium. There are books on the floor, on the walls, on tables. There are books on the counter, in cardboard displays from the publishers, and on metal stands that look as though they’ve been stolen from a high school library. All are crammed into a single, old-​looking room, with hard wooden floorboards and the old vents in the walls.
The selection is good, with a particularly impressive line-​up of non-​fiction books about history and current affairs. (There is something about Perth and its military histories: every bookstore seems to be overflowing with them, and this one is no exception, with only its selection of food-​related tomes challenging it for supremacy.) It is also probably the only bookstore I have found that has a section dedicated to Antarctica. You’ll find it on the wall to your right when you enter, in amongst the teenage vampire books.