What customers (and owners) love about 10 L.A. bookstores

This story is part of Lit City, our comprehensive guide to the literary geography of Los Angeles. Bookstores are wide open again -- the booksellers busy selling, the customers browsing and the house cats doing their thing. In March, staff writers Dorany Pineda and Christi Carras visited 10 shops around town with a photographer in tow -- from a romance bookshop in Culver City and a Black-owned store at the Westfield mall to the Central Library and establishments serving cookbook obsessives, design geeks and others. In the gallery below, customers, employees and owners talk about their favorite shops, books and reading nooks and share what they love about bookish Los Angeles. "Not all romance even has sex, but most of the books that we sell do, and we're trying to promote a very positive environment where it's something that's talked about openly and without judgment, and where there's a real variety represented -- obviously with gender and sexuality," said Leah Koch, co-owner of the Ripped Bodice.