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Bookshops

A Reader's History

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

"Bookshops is the best kind of biblio-mystery, in which a cultivated and civilized detective guides us through the labyrinth of the world's stores, stopping to talk for a while, before plunging off on the next fascinating diversion. Jorge Carrion brings page-turning excitement to the extended essay form." —Iain Sinclair

Jorge Carrion collects bookshops: from Gotham Book Mart and the Strand Bookstore in New York City to City Lights Bookshop and Green Apple Books in San Francisco and all the bright spots in between (Prairie Lights, Tattered Cover, and countless others). In this thought-provoking, vivid, and entertaining essay, Carrion meditates on the importance of the bookshop as a cultural and intellectual space. Filled with anecdotes from the histories of some of the famous (and not-so-famous) shops he visits on his travels, thoughtful considerations of challenges faced by bookstores, and fascinating digressions on their political and social impact, Bookshops is both a manifesto and a love letter to these spaces that transform readers' lives.

Jorge Carrion is a writer and literary critic. His published works include essays, novellas, novels and travel writing, and his articles have appeared in National Geographic and Lonely Planet Magazine.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from August 21, 2017
      Spanish novelist and travel writer Carrión’s English-language debut explores the place of bookshops (and books) in Western intellectual and consumer history. He weaves together an investigation of the different social functions of bookshops and libraries, a travelogue of bookshops he has visited, and a philosophical inquiry into the role of literature in the world. For Carrión, contemporary readers find in bookshops “the remains of cultural gods that have replaced the religious sort.” He is alive to the contradictions inherent in reading and book collecting, activities that are simultaneously consumerist and spiritual. The idea of books and bookshops as sites of resistance to totalitarianism is discussed but not blindly romanticized; he notes that Hitler was a bestselling writer and Mao an erudite reader. Discussing destination bookshops, including Shakespeare and Company in Paris, the oldest bookshops in the world, and several that claim to be the biggest, Carrión explores the fine lines between pilgrimage destination, touristy gimmick, and decent bookshop. This is the perfect book for those who feel compelled to visit every bookstore they see. Agent: Nicole Witt, Mertin Agency.

    • Kirkus

      August 1, 2017
      A literate mappa mundi to bookstores.This is the first of Spanish author Carrion's books to be translated into English. He writes that "every bookshop is a condensed version of the world," this book like a "cartography of a bookshop." Entering this Borges-ian labyrinth of books, readers will encounter bookshops as "archaeological sites or junk shops," police censorship, the lives and works of booksellers, reading as "obsession and madness," and the "bookshop as the world." This is no mere travel guide but rather a philosophical, reflective, wide-ranging inquiry into the world of books. Carrion began the first of his many voyages in 1998 at a bookshop in Guatemala City. He reminds us that the "oldest bookshop in the world" is in Lisbon, not far from his home in Barcelona. Along this journey, readers are guided by Montaigne and Diderot epigraphs as well as wisdom from a vast array of writers, including Goethe, Mallarme, and Benjamin. The bookseller is a "critic and cultural activist," and since ancient Rome, bookshops have been "spaces for establishing contact." Carrion is excellent discussing Paris' most famous shops, American Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare & Company, where Joyce's Ulysses was born, and Adrienne Monnier's La Maison des Amis des Livres. Both also functioned as lending libraries, art galleries, hotels, and cultural centers. Carrion sees bookshops as political bastions and recounts The Satanic Verses uproar, Hitler as bestselling author, Mao Zedong's bookshop/publishing house, and book burnings. His trip across America includes visits to New York City's Gotham Book Mart and the Strand, Denver's Tattered Cover, Portland's Powells, and San Francisco's City Lights. The author also discusses the impact of the brick-and-mortar chains and Amazon, the "supreme Virtual Bookshop," as well as the sad story of a 100-year-old Barcelona bookshop that became a McDonald's. An insightful, educational, and erudite paean to bookshops.

      COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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