For me, part of the fun of any vacation is visiting local bookstores, and last week in Denver, I got back to an old favorite: The Tattered Cover. From the store's name, you might think it's a tiny cove of used books, overseen by a fat calico cat. But it's really a group of three large stores steeped in modern merchandising. One store is in a renovated warehouse in the fashionable LoDo neighborhood, another is in a former historic theater (shown here), and a third is a typical suburban store (I guess Denver doesn't have as many historic buildings to rehab as the Baltimore area does.)

I can always depend on the store's employees to point me to books with local relevance. Last year, I picked up "Deadwood" by Pete Dexter and this year, "Tallgrass" by Denver author Sandra Dallas. The new read is a fictional account of a real-life tragedy: a camp built in Colorado during World War II to house Japanese-Americans. It has a "To Kill a Mockingbird" feel.

In Aspen, I was pleasantly surprised to find Explore Booksellers, which occupies most of two floors of a Victorian house. (The rest is an airy vegetarian restaurant.) It was a nice change of pace from the designer shops that stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the town center. And Aspen seems like the type of place (surrounded by big spenders, removed from big box stores) that an indie can survive -- as long as the rent doesn't get too high.

I'll have to update the Read Street bookstore map. Let me know avout your vacation finds, and I'll add them, too.