Barnes & Noble Bookstore

This barnes and nobles is ok, it gets flooded with the wonderful hopkins students… so i tend to stay away from this location. noisy and crowded most of the time.

It’s the chain bookstore that drives out independent bookstores… yes. This one is a collegiate one though with lots of JHU stuff and had a great special display for poetry month. Good selection of kids books too. Not bad.

Sterile & Grandiose Corporate Bookstore! Yikes! Unlike the Barnes & Noble in the Inner Harbor, this B & N bookstore is devoid of all charm. It has a very poor selection of books for the general public and it is primarily used as JHU’s bookstore. Now you know why textbooks are so expensive! They pay the rent for this monstrosity!
The food is processed goop. They put the daily newspapers behind the counter, so you have to pay for them before you can even decide if you want to buy them! Wow! That was great move. At least I would buy some corporate food goop once in a while, now I don’t spend a dime in there!
The authors they have come to speak are mostly quite lame and the discount book section is a joke. The same discount books are still there six months later! I guess business is rough when you’re only catering to college students.
It certainly is not for the general public. Too bad JHU didn’t put their bookstore where it belongs — on their campus! What an incredible waste. It’s a huge space that could have been much better used to benefit the entire Charles Village community, instead of just some wealthy college students who could care less about the rest of the surrounding community.
On the positive side, the people who work at this particular Barnes and Noble are always nice and easy to communicate with! I’m not dissing the employees, just the corporate takeover of a campus bookstore.

What can i say? It’s a bookstore with both cheap and expensive goods and stationary. There is also a Johns Hopkins University merchandise store with expensive clothing that has the JHU logo. Not for the stingy, although the clothes are high quality.

Its a Barnes & Noble that pulls double duty as the «official» bookstore for Johns Hopkins. However, don’t expect a student discount.

*This review is for the café only*
I have been coming to this bookstore since 2006 because it is an alternative from the super quiet library. I must say, I simply adore the staff that is in the café. There are times when I am in the café doing work, and they are so upbeat. Since 2006, I have seen many baristas come and go, but every barista is friendly. Oddly enough, I haven’t had a bad drink here. I’m sure if I did, they would fix it promptly. In addition, I love how they play music according to their personalities. One barista may bump rock and another one bumping Al Green. Yes!
There is a lot of space to do work in the café area, and again, the baristas are lovely! If you are in Charles Village, you have to check out the café. Nope, it is any thing fancy, but I love the smiles and the lovely service!

I got the impression from other reviews that this Barnes & Noble was basically a campus bookstore for JHU, so not being a student at JHU, I had never stopped in.
However, on black Friday, B&N was selling a select number of Nooks for a really low price, and I had the brilliant plan to go to my local Charles Village B&N to score one. I figured that since its not a busy store, they wouldn’t be sold out. I was wrong. No Nook for me. However, I decided to stick around to browse anyway.
It’s true: this is the place to get your JHU mugs, sweatpants, keychains, and textbooks– but it is also very much a Barnes and Noble. I mean, I would much rather frequent The Book Escape or Atomic Books, but should you have an immediate need for a brand spankin’ new best seller, test prep book, or book ‘accessory’, you will most likely find what you’d come to expect from a B&N here.

Let’s start off with the facts: although this is a Barnes & Noble branch, it is actually a Johns Hopkins University bookstore that, aside from general interest coffee shop, sells Hopkins paraphernalia like T-​shirts, mugs, diploma frames, and books. Thus, unless a visitor has needs for such merchandise or just wants a cup of joe with side of muffin, don’t bother. As an establishment, the store is well stocked and they accept the B&N discount cards. I found the staff friendly and very helpful.

Why have a second floor when it carries absolutely nothing of interest. It just serves to confuse people and make them work up an appetite for coffee and buns downstairs. The JHU-​JHMI bus stops just outside here. So, my suggestion… it’s where the shuttle stop is.

Oh, campus bookstores. A friend of mine overheard an employee of this store say that it was quite busy. but only for two weeks of the year! Apparently everyone runs in here for their textbooks, but never returns to browse through the rest of the store.
Not that there would be so much to come back for. The selection is mediocre at best. For the only large bookstore by campus, the non-​fiction shelves (I didn’t look at the fiction) are a fairly disappointing. Not much there to broaden your horizon.
It’s still a Barnes & Noble, which is better than no bookstore at all, but it doesn’t compare well, neither with what it could be nor with other large chain bookstores.