Hi! My family and I are going on a trip all week next week to celebrate my brother in laws graduation and birthday and I’m curious if anyone knows any great local bookstores in either the Baltimore area, or Philly (US).

As well as any other foods/coffee places if you have those too.

I always love to browse and check some out even if I don’t plan to buy books. 📚 it’s one of my favorite things to do when traveling.

I already made a similar post in the forum of the book this is about, but I really am wondering. I only recently started reading again recently, but this may be the first time that I've looked for a table of contents and it just wasn't there. I thought, 'Well, maybe it's a genre thing. Maybe horror novels don't do ToC because it messes with suspense or something.' But then I went to my bookshelf and 4 of my other recent acquisitions— all different genres— also don't have them.

Are ToC just less common in books marketed toward adults? What's everyone else's experience with this? Do you care one way or the other? I like having them because it helps me plan how much time I spend reading in one sitting.

This is partly in response to @valkyrie_221B's excellent post "Reading is a spectrum" in which the question was posed: "have you guys ever read two (or more!) books at the same time where the themes/subjects are not even close to each other?"

I couldn't think of an immediate answer (although I am sure I've had some weird weeks like what is mentioned), but something else came to mind that was just too much of a side tangent to comment there.

So, instead I ask: For those of us who read more than one book at a time, what are the moments where there was some overlap between two unrelated books you were reading that you didn't expect?

For example, a few weeks ago I was reading two different books where the aunt in the story was (or was physically presenting as) younger than her own nephew.