Tucked into Washington Plaza North in the planned community of Reston, Virginia, Reston’s Used Book Shop has been trading in secondhand books since 1978, when two women known locally as the Sues first opened its doors. The shop changed hands in 1999 when Susan and Bud Burwell, who had been regular customers before becoming owners, took over the business and grew it into the community fixture it remains today, describing it in their own words as a literary living room for readers of all ages rather than a simple used bookstore. That phrase captures the shop’s atmosphere well: it is a place designed for lingering, browsing, and conversation as much as for transactions, set in a walkable plaza at the heart of Reston’s town center design.
The shop stocks pre owned books across genres and age ranges, and it operates on a trade in model that lets regular customers bring in their own gently used books in exchange for shop credit or trade toward other titles, a system that keeps inventory turning over and gives the shop’s collection a constantly shifting, community sourced character rather than a static, warehouse style selection. Because trade ins are central to how the shop restocks, book reviews are handled by appointment only, scheduled at eleven, noon, or one o’clock, Monday through Saturday, with a limit of two boxes per appointment, a policy that lets staff give each incoming batch of books proper attention rather than rushing through a pile at the counter. Customers bringing in a larger haul are welcome to use the shop’s own handcart, a small but telling detail about a business built around neighbors helping neighbors move books in and out the door.
Reston’s Used Book Shop is open daily from eleven in the morning until seven at night, hours generous enough to accommodate both a lunchtime browse from nearby office workers and an evening visit from families out for a walk around the plaza. The staff, including Julie, Katie, and Samantha working alongside owners Susan and Bud Burwell, have built the kind of long tenured, familiar presence that regular customers come to associate with an independent bookstore rather than a chain, where staff recommendations carry weight because they come from people who actually know the shelves.
Reston itself, planned in the 1960s around walkable town centers and shared public spaces, has long supported small independent retailers like this one, and the bookshop’s location in Washington Plaza North puts it within easy reach of the lake, restaurants, and other small businesses that make up Reston’s original town center concept. For readers who prefer hunting through real shelves to scrolling an algorithm, the trade in model also means prices tend to run well below new retail, making it possible to build a substantial home library gradually and affordably over repeat visits.
Reston’s Used Book Shop has served the Reston community continuously since 1978, evolving under longtime owners Susan and Bud Burwell into what its own staff calls a literary living room, a used bookstore built as much around trade ins, appointments, and neighborly conversation as around the books themselves, and it remains one of the town center’s most enduring independent retail anchors.
