Iced Coffee, Hot Coffee, and the Magic of Bookstore Days

“Is there anything better than iced coffee and a bookstore on a sunny day? I mean, aside from hot coffee and a bookstore on a rainy day.”

Honestly, I can’t think of many things that beat either scenario. On a sunny day, it’s the kind of iced coffee that beads with condensation before you’ve even taken the first sip, paired with the satisfying creak of an old bookshop door. The sunlight filters through high windows, catching in the dust motes and making the spines on the shelves gleam like a rainbow of well-loved treasures. There’s a lightness to it—a sense of possibility—that maybe today you’ll discover that book, the one you didn’t even know you needed.

Rainy-day bookshop visits are an entirely different kind of bliss. The air is rich with the scent of wet pavement and freshly brewed coffee, the rain pattering against the windows as you wrap your hands around a warm mug. The world outside might be grey and hurried, but inside, time slows. You linger over hardbacks you’ll never quite convince yourself to buy, stroke the covers of new releases, and tuck yourself into a corner chair to read the first few pages of something that just feels right.

I’ve always thought of bookshops as the perfect in-between place—somewhere between adventure and sanctuary. And whether the coffee is iced or hot, the magic is the same: you walk in carrying the day’s weather with you, and you leave with a little more than you came for. Usually in the form of a paper bag and a slightly lighter bank account.

So tell me—are you a sunshine-and-iced-coffee reader, or do you live for the rainy-day-hot-coffee kind of bookstore bliss?