Dreaming of Uncle Hugo’s

Bookstores bookstores bookstores! All book dorks love them, and yet not enough of us have easy access to them. Up here in Bemidji, the closest thing we have to a bookstore is the used games and DVD store, which has a fairly meh book collection and a business name that doesn’t really fit what it is, and the comic book store, which, as you’d guess, mostly carries comics and has a fairly small but reasonably OK book collection (the comics collection is awesome, though). Beyond that, the next best thing is a trip to Park Rapids for Beagle & Wolf or to Brainerd for Emily’s or CatTale’s, all decent small bookstores. Otherwise, you gotta go to Duluth or Minneapolis for a really big bookstore experience!

Since I’m stuck up here in Bemidji during a pandemic, I’ve started reminiscing about some of my favorite bookstores in Minnesota — of which they are many. When it comes right down to it, though, there is one bookstore that stands above them all: Uncle Hugo’s!

Pretty much every geek in Minnesota knows about Uncle Hugo’s and it’s sister shop, Uncle Edgar’s. At least, they should. My friend Larry did not, which required him to take a six month geek training course. But Larry is an unusual geek because most of his best friends are the ghosts of ancient Vikings. Needless to say, he came out of his first Uncle Hugo’s experience with a large bag of books, a grin on his face, and enough ethereal joy in his heart to light a sun.

What is it that makes Uncle Hugo’s so great? Let’s recount the ways, shall we?

1. It has an impressive selection of SF/F/H. And I do mean impressive. As one of a very small number of SF/F/H specialist bookstores and one of two in the Minneapolis area (DreamHaven is also exceptional), Uncle Hugo’s has amassed an impressive collection of stuff in all formats. I’ve found things in their collection you would have a hard time finding anywhere else but the Internet. Half of my new “space opera by women I’ve never heard of” collection has come from there, and that equates to a lot of somewhat obscure or forgotten books! So if you’re looking for reads, both old and new, Uncle Hugo’s very likely has it.
2. The staff is both helpful and knowledgeable. I think we take this sort of thing for granted because our culture has often conditioned us to accept inexpert service in a variety of industries. One of the reasons I’m not a big “corporate store” fan is precisely the absence of expertise. But the folks who work at Uncle Hugo’s have read an absolute metric fuckton (actual weight) of books. So when you go in looking to get help grabbing a book near the ceiling, you’re also likely to get an interesting conversation about their first experience with that book or a related book OR help finding something else in the same wheelhouse. That sort of interaction is priceless.
3. It has a sister store for mystery fans called Uncle Edgar’s. If you’re the kind of person who flits back and forth between genres, Uncle Edgar’s is literally in the same building. You just walk through a large doorway and you’re in the wild realm of mysteries of all kinds. That makes for interesting group bookstore crawl experiences. When I took Larry to Uncle Hugo’s for the first time, he actually spent half of his time in Uncle Edgar’s. How many bookstores can say they have huge collections dedicated to two groupings of genre literature? Not many. Certainly not many without multiple stories for books.

Truly, Uncle Hugo’s is in the upper tier of great bookstores. If you’re ever down in Minneapolis, you have to check it out (not to mention all the other great bookstores down there; Minnie has so much going for it). And if you can’t go, they have an AbeBooks store you can buy from!

Now I throw this back at you! What is one of your favorite bookstores?