By Peter Fish, Sunset Editor-at-Large

Sam Weller’s Zion Bookstore is to Salt Lake City what Powell’s is to Portland--essential, irreplaceable, wonderful. It’s been there a long time (since 1929) and has woven itself into the city’s history--enviro writer Terry Tempest Williams supposedly met her husband while both worked there. What I like about it most—along with its beautiful pressed tin ceilings—is that it has the books you know you want and also the books you don’t know you want until you see them. For me, that second kind of encounter usually occurs in Sam Weller’s big section of books about the West, where you find items like Uncle Sam’s Camels, the saga of the U.S. Army’s 19th century effort to replace Army mules with, well, Army camels in the desert southwest.   A relative newcomer is the Coffee Garden, the bookstore’s caffeinated corner where you can get lattes and muffins and sit reading what you’ve just bought.  Which could be In Style or Sports Illustrated but which was in my case Uncle Sam’s Camels. Here’s my equation: cappuccino + camels = pleasure.