Sat next to the Mayer Campus Center is the Tufts University Barnes & Noble College branch. It may be frequently ignored by students in the months between the very start and end of the semester, but it is still technically a bookstore. Inside the building, you can find a range of items, including sweatshirts, snacks, cold medicine, textbooks, branded mugs and a few regular books.
In the past, you had to push past the overpriced t-shirts and crewnecks to find the ‘bookstore’ part of the Tufts Bookstore. Now that the mailroom is taking over the basement, the nonacademic books have been moved closer to the front. Crowded in between the candy and the unnecessary school supplies is the new leisure reading section, providing Tufts students the chance to give Tufts more of their money rather than supporting a local bookstore.
My visit to the bookstore was quiet, as only a few other people were in the building with me. After several minutes, I had finished browsing the only shelf of books that are unassociated with a course. My favorite section is the one where they highlight the books by Tufts faculty and graduates. We have some pretty cool people, like the guy that cowrote “American Prometheus” (2005), the biography that inspired the film “Oppenheimer” (2023) — any Cillian Murphy fans? — and the guy who wrote “Killers of the Flower Moon” (2023) (We’re big on movie adaptations here.) There is also a small section that has manga, the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series, Shakespeare and “The Merriam-Webster Dictionary” all grouped together because, why not?
The other side of the primary bookshelf holds recent bestsellers, with recent being a somewhat relative term. The top section is a small fiction collection, with the other three consisting of general nonfiction. They are all sorted by author’s last name, so you get some awkward moments where the Elon Musk biography is two books down from former Vice President Kamala Harris’s book, and Britney Spears’ memoir is next to a book on the war in Sierra Leone. In the bottom left corner is a collection of “Dungeons & Dragons” books that seem to have been there since I matriculated.
If your younger sibling tagged along for Jumbo Days, then there is a small selection of picture and middle-grade books for them. As the younger sister who’s been dragged to so many college campuses, we deserve a book or some of the aforementioned candy for our time.
Overall, though, I think the Tufts Bookstore has a decent collection of leisure reading for a shop not dedicated to such. If you are looking for your next read, I would recommend checking Tisch Library or reading previous editions of this column for local independent bookstore recommendations. However, if you’re in a time crunch or have the urge to flip through some pages, then a stop in the campus bookstore can be enough.
So, if you need a shirt for college decision day or just to look good in brown and blue, head to the campus bookstore. While you’re there, I recommend checking out the meager selection of books that may be there just to fulfill the legal minimum to be considered a bookstore.
I did not end up purchasing anything at the campus bookstore, but the sour gummy worms were quite tempting.
