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Category: Bookstores
Neighborhood: Griffith Park/Los FelizMon-Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m.
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I have been browsing and buying from this store since it opened.
The staff will answer almost any question that you can imagine.
You can get lost for hours in the magazine section. Comfortable yet small with eclectic, urm, eccentric choices.
An independent/ "ma and pa" bookstore.
Plus the guy, who designed it? Leonardo is 100% cool.
I just came in here to browse.
Great selection of books for being such a small store.
Really liked that they have staff recommendations.
They also have an extension of Skylight, a door down, complete with books about interior design, art, and much more. It looked like they were having a speaker that afternoon so I couldn't browse in the back. It was a little stuffy inside because of the sun shining in but otherwise, this is a place worth checking out.
Support your independent bookstore!
Love this place cuz I 1. Love independent/or mom and pop type shops and 2. love culturally unique stores that support community and uncommon interests.
They had a cool talk about anime and other related literature when we rolled through. Kinda stuffy when the sun is blazing, but the books that they had on display were unique, some colletion of art books that were definitely up my alley. I would love to roll through another time if I get a chance!
What a charming place! Good service, great books, and a super sweet neighborhood-y feel about the place. I'll definitely be back, maybe to get a present for my architect-father.
Excellent bookstore. Great place to go if you need to ask someone for a recommendation. Not sure if it was just the 2 books that I purchased here, but the 2 recommendations I was given, and subsequently read, caused me to go through a psycho-spiritual breakdown. What I had asked for was some light reading.
Love this bookstore. I went for a panel on the State of Indie Music. They regularly have all kinds of readings .... poetry, fiction. They're an essential part of a weird, thriving community.
Yah for indie book shops!!! There are now two storefronts for Skylight- the smaller one is fashion/art while the larger one is more general, with a cat. Friendly staff, impressive selection for its size, good staff recommendations, fun people watching, and circular seating in the middle of the larger shop. Looking forward to coming back for book club/ speaker event.
Ever since I moved away from Berkeley, I've missed wandering around indie bookstores like this one. But I'd forgotten how much until recently.
I don't necessarily wish every Barnes & Noble disappeared from the face of the earth, but I do hold out hope that brave little stores like this one will somehow survive. They're hideaways filled with individuality and the kind of rough-around-the-edges charm that big chains - for all their convenience and variety - can never reproduce. I don't think I would've known that They Might Be Giants had made a children's book if I had been browsing a big chain bookstore. But I found it here one night featured right above the "Reading Is Sexy" stickers by the front. Need I say "awesome"? No. I needn't.
There's an expanded section a couple doors down full of arts, music and literature books, as well as a very cool magazine section. What qualifies as a "very cool" magazine section to me? When they stock all the Asian American magazines that are struggling against all odds to not go under (lest our only print media representation be bony "ethnic" models in "W" Magazine and whatever skanky flavor of the day is pretending to be the candy of some celebri-douche's arm).
The expansion also has a very cool graphic novel section. It qualified as "very cool" because I asked the bookseller if he had anything by an author who happens to be a good college buddy of mine, and he handed me both "the one that won the Eisner Award, and his new one." For someone who admittedly buys most of his books from a website that rhymes with, um... ramazon dot com... this was pretty impressive.
Thanks, Skylight, for reminding me how much I missed places like this.
Friendly, warm, with an appropriate smell.
A little overwhelming, but in an organized sort of way.
Get to your movie half-an-hour early and just hang out. I wish I lived closer, because I'm out of note-cards. Maybe this weekend I'll go get some.
BONUS! Fliers for local book clubs. Precious.
One of the best places in the world to spend a rainy day. Or a sunny day. Or just a slightly overcast June gloom day. Basically...any day that ends in the letter Y, Skylight is a great place to be.
Their selection is amazing, particularly the Los Angeles, writers', and GLBT sections, the staff is kind and helpful, the greeting cards are a sophisticated kind of cute, and the atmosphere just...well, see above paragraph.
I have been shopping here for about six years now and am always able to find what I need or special order it and have it in my sweaty, book-lovin little paws within the week.
p.s. The new arts extension is AWESOME in that let's-spend-our-entire-paycheck-here-and-love-it way. I'm not even going to dock a star for lack of a secret tunnel connecting it with the original store.
This place rocks. I came here today looking for a b-day gift for someone special and found the perfect book!
It was between Mario Testino's photography book with half naked women in there, OR the red Stanley Kubrick archives.
Guess which one I chose?
Kubrick of course! This was a rare book so I had to jump at the chance. Too bad this was the last copy and they didn't have an sealed copy.
But, the guy was cool and gave me a 10% discount. He also gift wrapped it for free!
Cool lil gem in Los Feliz. Check them out!
The main bookstore has many inviting spots to sit. I appreciate the store kitty cat as well as the eclectic, fresh selection of books (especially children's and YA books). They special-order books quickly and host many events. Resist the corporatization of book-selling! Check out Skylight ^_^
I am a sucker for independent bookstores. Especially when have a cat. Skylight books happens to be both. The selection isn't the biggest, but what they do have is excellent. This is a great place to find the next author you want to admire, or to pick up guys like me. I'll be there later. Just message me. I'm addicted to Yelp. I can't lie. I check it all the time. Even in the bookstore.
I am an amazon fan, but if i need something right away, or want to explore a bit this is an amazing shop.
They have a great section on books specific to los angeles. Great cards and postcards and things of that sort.
This is my favorite bookstore in LA. I drive all the way from Long Beach to come here! But I'm a little wierd that way.
This is how a bookstore should be: cozy, browsable, easy to get lost in. Good selection, and a friendly staff. Lots of books of local interest.
They have a good selection of zines, which earns them a mega-thumbs-up from me.
Great little store. Quiet and relaxed. It's easily the kind of place you go in thinking you know exactly what to get and end up spending a couple hours exploring. That's what happens to me, anyways.
It's a bit more expensive that looking on something like Amazon or eBay, etc for used copies or whatever. But in this case, I'd say it's worth it.
Check it out!
It's definitely worth it to pay a little more for a good book knowing that the money goes to supporting a community bookshop. Oh, and also, Jenny Lewis sometimes walks in here, which is pretty cool.
There are reviews written by staff, which is how I found out about Fante a few years back, and cool cards and journals, not like the kind that you'd see at a Borders of Barnes and Noble.
Awesome book store. There's a quote from John Fante's "Ask the Dust" carved into the floor near the entrance. That's pretty much all you need to know.
Great selection. Helpful staff, not in the least snooty. The art / music books extension they opened next door is cool too.
Oh sure, maybe they don't have every book you're looking for. And maybe they don't have a cafe in the store. And maybe Mary Kate Olsen doesn't pick Skylight for her LA booksignings.
I don't really know where I'm going with all this but Skylight is the real deal. A great bookstore with a friendly and knowledgeable staff.
Thank you yelpers!
I am a really big reader, I will pretty much go to any bookstore anyone suggests. In a moment of boredom, I read a ton of reviews on yelp and found that Skylight Books was one of the best reviewed. I decided to go here mainly because my dad works a few blocks away so I could talk him into buying me lunch before I went. Two birds, one stone...
So I went into the bookstore and, since I am definitely an aesthetic person, the first thing I noticed was that it was very well decorated. It's very basic, but something about the uneven flooring and the light wood bookshelves really drew me in. The hight ceilings and great lighting were just a plus.
After checking out the tables, I began in the biography section. The first thing I noticed were the "staff recommends" cards that hung from almost every shelf. I found myself reading these instead of browsing the books themselves because they were so helpful and interesting. Even the books I knew I wouldn't want to read sounded interesting with these cards hanging from the shelf below! I ended up buying 3 books based off of these recommendations, spending much more than I had planned (or could afford!).
Overall, this is definitely a reader's bookstore. If you love to read and you love to find books that you maybe have never heard of or wouldn't normally look at, then GO HERE! I will definitely be back as soon as I finish the 3 books I bought.
Skylight is everything a neighborhood bookstore should be. Their selection isn't as vast as one of the corporate chain stores but it's been obviously, carefully handpicked. Alongside the classics you'll find exciting and original new voices in literature like Davy Rothbart and Mark Danielewski. In fact, my best experiences at Skylight are the times when I go in with no specific book or author in mind and just stumble upon something completely unexpected and wonderful like "The Echo Maker" by Richard Powers or "Little Miss Strange" by Joanne Rose.
I'm so grateful to Skylight for introducing me to cool new authors like those above, having an awesome selection of periodicals (including 'zines), always playing cool music on the sound system and helping to foster a neighborhood vibe in dear Los Feliz.
Skylight Books is an independant book store, just steps away from Palermo's and Fred 62. They have 2 store sections that aren't attached, so make sure you check out the 2nd section (catering to music, arts, photography and magazines - independant and non) just steps away.
I do enjoy your average Borders, but Skylight is more how bookstores should be. Upon entrance, you immediately get hit with that "book" smell, you know, the musty smell of pages, both old and new. Skylight is clearly a bookstore that kicks it up a notch from Borders. You won't find "Shopaholic Does Manhattan" in the store front windows there. Skylight also proved they were much smarter than me last night.
After gorging myself 2 doors down at Palermo's, I was in serious need of some digesting material. I perused the sections at Skylight...GLBT, Science, History...until I stopped at a section geared towards "Paranormal, Occult and Otherwise UFO conspiricies, and Alternative Lifestyle" - note, this was identified merely by symbols (UFO, hemp leaf, etc). Hmmm...Hakim Bey...Lifestyle Anarchism...The note said to read if I wanted to learn about some kind of alternative political theory (only if I was sick of Marx, that is)...Ooh, digestion is not so good...Quickly read the back cover, took some mental notes, put it down and moved on...Hmmm....Charles Darwin...or better yet, Hawkins' "A Brief History of Time"....seems nice...or maybe "The Case Against God"...Seems interesting...But oh, food is not settling and I'm starting to get cross-eyed!
And then I just didn't kid myself...The more and more I thought about it, the more I concluded that after my intellectual "glory days" in college (and I use the term loosely), there is just little to no time to be intellectual anymore...I can barely hang on to the latest regarding the election, barely hold my own in conversations regarding foreign affairs, and barely work a 55 hour work week. Not to mention, I'm barely digesting half a sausage/meatball pizza.
After briefly flipping through independant pamplets like "The Feminist Handbook for the Revolution", "Pork, Ribs and Cocaine" and "A Lengthy Discourse on the Nature Of Squatting", I finally settled on an old favorite:
"Where the Wild Things Are"
(and some very graphic pictorials regarding burlesque fashion in the photography section)
So, yes... I love Skylight books, though making me feel like a dullard last night, they still managed to provide me with some superb digestion material.
I'll be back on one of my "smarter" days...hopefully soon.
This bookstore was such an amazing little place. I found myself only in here a few times but the short time I did peruse the aisles, I found an autographed copy of a book I was in search of. Who knew I'd get this one autographed copy? It was just waiting to be snatched up. I was very impressed.
I also loved the kitty who would sleep in the window and roam around, it made it feel like home.
I love exploring the store when i'm in the area. Unique finds. You can probably find the books cheaper online but the ambience is worth a look.
I'm giving Skylight 5 stars because I'm pretty sure it's the only place in L.A. that sells Aaron Cometbus.
The people who work there are very nice, helpful, and have an excellent knowledge of obscure authors and books.
I'm also pretty much in love with the giant orange kitty that naps all over the shelves here.
I love skylight.
One of the more mom & pop bookstores in LA, and they take pride in not being another "borders" or Barnes...
They carry all kinds of great fiction and non-, art, childrens... every genre.
Occasionally they have signed editions.
Every couple weeks, they host great readings by authors which I rarely attend nowadays.
The only downside of skylight is some of the pretension.
But I don't need their advice on what to read, so it doesn't bother me much.
The A-List Hipster Bookstore.
I feel so cool just by looking at it, that buying books there has its own infinite charm. And because I'm relatively close by it (only 4-5 miles by biking) I think I'll continue to swing by it to buy informative books on detox diets, vegan cookbooks, French cartoons, and STDs.
P.S. They have a creepy ghost that interfered with my credit card transaction last time. Boo, ghost, boo!
Good poetry selection, and they carry a nice selection of poetry chapbooks by local LA presses. I feel good when I am here.
So this place is bomb, as everyone knows.
I went in there to get a card for my mom for Mother's Day (get on it, kids!) and I found the best card from a cute local company. I feel like I want promoting them to be like my new thing or something (that's how cute it was), so if anyone wants to buy a card, totes check out: http://www.damnginacar.... I think they sell them online.
Also, their book recommendations are bomb. And the guys who work there are cute! (in a nerdy way --- don't let my taste in boys spoil you against my taste in cards. Lolz)
This places book selection is not too shabby. I went the other day to purchase a book for a friends birthday, and this person is into politics so I grabbed a book by Herbert Marcuse called "One Dimensional Man," and to say the least the book was actually there and inexpensive. I had been searching at other book stores for this same book and they said I had to special order it, but this place had it.
Good selection of design titles and obscure books. Supporting local businesses is a no-brainer with Skylight.
I am giving Skylight Books 5 stars because I believe in supporting the 'hood and the little man. I love an indie bookstore more than life itself. Skylight carries all the usual suspects needed in a snargey bookstore, AND they have the top ten best sellers, which means I could buy a birthday present of quality for my friend AND buy myself the 4th installment of the Meyer's vampire series. Yes, I am a tewl.
This time, the people behind the counter were not douchey at all, which is another reason they get 5 stars today. I have been in there before and been overwhelmed by a tidal wave of douchey pretention. Um, look, lit chick douche, we all went to college. Shove your pretentiousness up your douchebag where it belongs.
Actually, yesterday all the people behind the counter were incredibly sweet and friendly. It was a happy day at Skylight, and because of it we dropped some cash.
walk on in, it's that smell, take it in. ah, you know you are in a real bookstore when the wood evokes essence of their brother trees before they became those paper pages, before they became those book shelves. it's that mustiness that tickles your braininess when you look around at all the books you have not read, and are reminded once more of all the things that you or i in this case do not yet know, and don't know if ever will know.
prose aside, they seriously have like 5 copies of every gorgeously colorful murakami book ever published, when at most chain bookstores with parasitic chain coffee shops attached (that shall remain unnamed due to respect) can barely muster out one measly copy of a couple of titles.
and for the record, if they wanted to join that damn coffee shop/book store alliance, i'm sure they could have turned their next door space into one, but instead skylight has made the choice to remain true to their bookstore roots, and have the next door annex if you will, be dedicated to the arts, and so ensuring that patronage is still alive and thriving, even here in the heart of hollywood.
Skylight Books is a gem of a bookstore.
It's easy to get lost in the small shop for hours at a time. Their selection is fantastic and the service is wonderful.
Hooray for Skylight!
dear skylight,
you are awesome!
love,
jenny
Ok. I'm back. Douglas K. here, reporting on Skylight Books, in Los Angeles (CA).
I wandered into this place looking for City of Quartz, a book about Los Angeles history circa 70s and 80s. My fabulous and well-read girlfriend had recommended that I find this book for a little lunchtime reading. Sadly, she was not with me when I visited Skylight.
Anyway, there was my book, in the Los Angeles/Local section. I found it in about fifteen seconds.
If you are looking for a good book by a lesser-known or otherwise totally-awesome author then Skylight is the place for you. Actually, if you live near Skylight but don't buy all your books there, then you're probably going to hell. It's that kind of local, must-shop store.
See you over there!
Douglas K.
I really like this bookstore because it is not your average place and does not hold your average collection. That may be a problem is you are looking for a specific book, but it certainly won't be a problem if you are just browsing, which is what I usually do.
I live in the area and often bike around and stop here during my bike trips. The clientele is great and friendly even though the store gets cramped easily. I love the McSweeney's and related section; always fun to skim them. The bench around the tree is a great place to sit for a few minutes with a couple interesting finds.
They also have great speakers here. I saw Matt Groening (from the Simpsons, he introduced another artist whose name I can't remember right now).
The town I grew up in had a huge independent bookstore very similar to this place so Skylight also reminds of home a little. They just expanded next door which should hopefully expand their selection while still keeping the unique flavor.
Skylight on Vermont consistently entertain special writer events. I'll never forget seeing James Ellroy here promoting The Black Dahlia. What can I say, the man's a consummate entertainer and has a genuine affection for cops, he should have been a cop if he weren't such a twisted remarkable pencil scribbler... I can't think of another bookstore that has a tree growing out of the middle of it. Skylight's sister site next door features comics and graphic novels. next to Dresden and Palermo's... Lucy the cat has passed!... Skylight writers: Cormac McCarthy, Geraldine Brooks, Ed Jones, Lawrence Wright, Steve Coll, Anne Applebaum, Bob Caro... LA times endorses nearby proprietors: House of Pies, Fred 62 (a "hipster" diner), and Figaro Cafe maker of "divine crepes" and cocktails that "make you feel European." what's that mean? thin and broke? http://theguide.latime...
I just discovered their extension next door. Wow, I really liked the selection of graphic novels and art books. Definitely the type of shop that I could spend a good chunk of time just wandering and browsing...and eventually purchasing quite a few items. Great shop, with a great vibe and friendly staff. Places like this remind me of why I need to move farther east...someday...
I don't know if I've ever walked by this store without going inside. Although my two favorite living creatures from Skylight are there no more (Lucy the cat, who recently died and Sophia The Great who went off to Ghana with her wife), there still are some friendly souls who work there.
Sucky things about the place is that there are few discounts (even though you can get 10% off with a KCRW card). They don't sell any right wing books (which is fine by me) but they sometimes even have difficulty selling left wing books (they went way too long before getting Al Gore's book, so I had to buy it elsewhere.)
Great things about the joint far outweigh the poor. They have a great McSweeneys section. Terrific book readings/signings. (I have had my books signed and read to me by the likes of Jerry Stahl, David Foster Wallace, Stacy Grenrock-Woods, Hubert Selby, Jr., Michael Connolly, Sarah Vowell, Eric Bogosian and James Ellroy-who fucking went off on me when I asked him a question about Bush vs. Clinton.) A nice indoor tree to read under. And then there's Charles who can simultaneously recommend books to you while making you feel like an idiot. Oh, and T.C. Boyle's leggy daughter works there too. You can even buy some of her fiction there in the McSweeney's section.
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Category: Bookstores
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