02.02.2012 / Arts & Culture
5 bookstores you should know
The smell of paper, the tickling roughness of a cover under your fingertips, the joy of browsing through the volumes and of leafing through the pages in the shade of a bookcase filled with the greatest masterpieces of International literature.
That’s what we’ll have to give up when we finally decide to switch from papaer books to e-books.
Of course, there will be as many advantages, maybe even more. Luckily, though, there are some places where that day still seems quite long to come.
What we’re talking about are certainly not those huge bookstore chains where books seem to have long lost their main role, but rather the few independent bookstores that are stubbornly managing to survive the advent of e-books in the name of a gloriuos past.
City Lights Books, San Francisco
Owned by beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the bookstore where Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac used to meet is still very popular. And what is more important, it keeps making room for young talents.
Shakespeare & Co, Paris
Here’s another former beat meeting point. Founded by British bibliophyle George Whitman back in 1951, this bookshop in the Quartier Latin has been featured in many a movie and became very popular with tourists. Yet, when it’s not too crowded, you can still leaf through books while sitting on a bed fitted in the bookshelves.
Foyles, London
Although it was probably more charming before the refit, with its old dusty bookshelves and piled up volumes, this West End bookstore is still a great place for book lovers. Check out the top floor for a nice selection of music scores.
Strand, New York City
Greenwich Village’s most beloved bookstore is a bit a flea market where you can find very cheap second-hand books. They claim to have over eighteen miles of books, but that’s hard to prove. Still, their rare book section is huge and interesting.
Gogol & Company
Part independent bookstore (engaged in promoting small publishing houses), part art space and part cafe, Gogol & Company opened only a couple of years ago, but we like the way they managed to animate their spaces without confining the books to a marginal role.
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