Four L.A. Bookstores Stay Open Until 9 or Later. The One That Runs Until 11 Finished Fourth.

We read the posted hours of thirteen Los Angeles-area bookstores. Six are dark by 8, three publish no hours at all, and four will still sell you a book at a quarter to nine. The ranking is about the evening you actually have free, which is why the store with the latest closing time on the list sits at the bottom of it.

Los Angeles stays up late at nearly everything except reading. The bars, the taco trucks, the 24-hour gyms and the repertory houses all keep hours built for someone who might still be out at ten. The bookstores mostly lock up while it is light out in August. So we read the posted hours of thirteen Los Angeles-area bookstores against the stores' own sites on Tuesday and sorted them by the only question that matters after dinner: is it open, and how often is it open?

Six of the thirteen are dark by 8 p.m. Three post no hours we could read anywhere on their sites. Four stay open until 9 p.m. or later — and only one of the four does it every night of the week.

The criteria, stated once and applied without mercy. First, how many nights a week the store runs to 9 p.m. or later, because a late store you cannot count on is a coin flip with parking attached. Second, how late the latest night goes. Third, what is in the building when you get there — the stock, the size, and whether the store puts something on its own calendar at 7 p.m. that gives the evening a shape. Ties go to whoever posts hours where a reader can find them.

The rule produces an uncomfortable result at the bottom of the list. We are keeping it.

1. Skylight Books — 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Feliz

Ten in the morning to ten at night, seven days a week, and that sentence is the entire argument. Skylight puts it in writing as a flat declarative on its own about page: "We are open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily." Of the thirteen stores we checked, it is the only one still open past 8 o'clock on a Sunday, and the only one that posts a 10 p.m. close on all seven days.

The stock is built for the kind of night that ends here. The store lists its own sections as literary fiction, children's books, graphic novels, California history and culture, political and social sciences, essays and nonfiction, and books on art, photography, film and music — a shelf plan that assumes the browser has an hour, not four minutes. Its event calendar runs in-store nights at 7 p.m., which is the correct hour for one: late enough to arrive after work, early enough that there is still store left afterward. The August 18 listing is Téa Obreht in conversation with Rufi Thorpe, seven o'clock, in the store.

Twelve hours a day, seven days a week, is not a summer schedule or a holiday promotion. It is payroll, every night of the week, in a trade that runs on single-digit margins. That is why this one is not close.

2. Vroman's Bookstore — 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena

Ten to nine Monday through Thursday, ten to ten Friday and Saturday, ten to seven Sunday, per the hours Vroman's posts on its own site. That is six nights a week running to 9 p.m. or later, two of them to 10, and it comes attached to the deepest evening calendar of the four. We counted fourteen nights in August carrying a 7 p.m. event on Vroman's own calendar — one of them offsite at Pasadena Presbyterian Church — including Brian Clune on Route 66 legends on August 21, Diana Giovinazzo with J. Ryan Stradal on August 25, the store's fiction reading group on August 26, and Sam Quinones on Our Lady of the Angels on August 31.

It is also the oldest store on this page by eighty-one years. Vroman's history page dates the founding to 1894 under Adam Clark Vroman and calls the store "Southern California's Largest & Oldest Independent Bookstore." The same page mentions two Vroman's boutiques inside LAX, which means this company's long-standing answer to "where can you buy a book late" has been an airport terminal.

The knock is Sunday. Seven o'clock on the one night most people have nothing scheduled is the whole gap between second place and first, and Pasadena is a drive from most of the city that would be doing the driving.

3. Book Soup — 8818 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood

Ten to nine Monday through Saturday, ten to seven Sunday, posted on the store's own contact page. Six nights to nine, never a minute past it. What Book Soup has instead of a later hour is the address: a bookstore on the Sunset Strip that closes at the hour the rest of the block is opening.

The inventory explains the placement as much as the clock does. Book Soup's about page puts the store at 60,000 titles, founded by Glenn Goldman in 1975, specializing in art, film, photography, music and literary fiction, with "a deep commitment to university, international, and small presses, and a love for autographed books." A tighter, sharper store than the two above it — and 60,000 is a number the store publishes, not one we estimated.

Its evenings run on the same seven o'clock clock as Vroman's, for a reason we will come back to. The August calendar lists Dave Wedge on August 19, Debra Levine on the choreographer Jack Cole on August 21, the store's UNSOUPERVISED READERS CLUB on August 26, and a Dan Tana's history with Matt Tyrnauer on August 28 — all at 7 p.m., all walk-in except the listings marked ticketed.

4. The Last Bookstore — 453 S. Spring St., downtown

The pick we expect to argue about. The Last Bookstore closes at 11 p.m., the latest posted close of the thirteen, inside more than 22,000 square feet of the Spring Arts Tower holding over 500,000 books and records — the store's own description of the shop Josh Spencer started in a downtown loft in 2005. It has the best late hour in the city. It finishes fourth.

Here is why, and it is not a matter of taste. The store's own downtown page posts its hours in exactly two lines: "Mon-Tue 11AM-8PM" and "Wed - Sat 10AM-11PM." There is no third line. Sunday is not listed at all. Four nights of the week are magnificent, two end at 8 p.m., and one is a question the store has not answered in print. Tonight is a Tuesday, which means the store that calls itself California's largest new and used book and record shop went dark at 8 while the three above it were still ringing people up.

Yes, we put the 11 p.m. store last, and we will defend it. Four nights of the best hour in town loses to seven nights of a good one, because the rule asks how often before it asks how late, and the rule was written before we looked. Anyone who plans their week around Wednesday through Saturday is welcome to reverse this list. They will be right about their own calendar and wrong about everybody's Monday.

The six that are already closed

Kinokuniya, 101 San Pedro St., Little Tokyo — 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, per the chain's own store directory. Eight o'clock, seven days a week, with no late night at all — an hour short of the four above it on their worst night.

Counterpoint Records & Books, 5911 Franklin Ave., Hollywood — "We are open everyday from noon-8pm," says the shop's own contact page, which also posts something almost nobody else does: buying hours, 1 to 6 p.m., every day. If you are arriving with books to sell rather than money to spend, that six-hour window is the only one on this page.

Golden Apple Comics, 7018 Melrose Ave. — 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. Sunday through Tuesday, per the store's own page. Three days out of seven, the Melrose counter is gone by five.

The Iliad Bookshop, 5400 Cahuenga Blvd., North Hollywood — "Tuesday - Saturday 11 am - 7 pm," per its contact page, closed Sunday and Monday. Two of the seven nights it is not open at all, and the other five end at seven.

Chevalier's Books, 133 N. Larchmont Blvd. — 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven days, per the store's own contact page. Six o'clock is before most of Larchmont has finished work.

Octavia's Bookshelf, 1353 N. Hill Ave., Pasadena — 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, closed Monday, per its own site. A short drive from Vroman's and four hours behind it on a Friday.

The three we could not rank

A ranking of posted hours needs posted hours. Small World Books in Venice publishes its address on Ocean Front Walk and its phone number, and no schedule. Now Serving, the cookbook store in Far East Plaza, publishes the unit number and not the hours. Stories Books & Cafe in Echo Park loads its listings through a storefront widget that renders no hours in the page itself, so there was nothing to read. All three may well be open tonight. We did not rank what we could not verify, and any of the three that puts its hours in plain text gets re-checked on the next pass.

And the library closes first

The obvious retort to all of this is that Los Angeles has a building full of free books downtown. It does, and it shuts earlier than the bookstore up the street. The Central Library at 630 W. 5th St. is open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday, per the Los Angeles Public Library's own branch page. On a Saturday night, the Central Library has been closed five and a half hours by the time The Last Bookstore locks its doors.

Four stores, three owners

One more number, because it changes how the list reads. Two of the four late stores are the same company: Vroman's bought Book Soup in 2009, after Goldman's death, when the West Hollywood store was in danger of closing, a fact Vroman's states on its own history page. So the city's entire supply of after-nine bookselling rests on three ownerships, one of which is a Pasadena company keeping a Sunset Strip institution alive as a second address.

That is thinner than a city this size should tolerate, and it is also the argument for going tonight instead of reading about it. It is Tuesday. Skylight is open until 10, Vroman's and Book Soup until 9, and the one with half a million books closed at 8. If your favorite is missing, it closes before nine, it posts no hours, or it opened after we checked — we looked at all three. The emails go to the desk.