Bookstores to see before you die
From Mexico City to Hangzhou, bookstores that are destinations in and of themselves
HANGZHOU, CHINA Zhongshuge Bookstore
In internet-addicted China, now the world’s largest e-commerce market, bookstores have had to reinvent themselves swiftly to survive. For Chinese bookseller Zhongshuge’s new outlet on Binsheng Road in Hangzhou, a booming tech hub about an hour east of Shanghai by train, this meant turning the concept of a bookstore on its head: Rather than making books the sole focal point, the owners created a high-design space filled with optical illusions to attract experience-seeking millennials and even younger readers.
When you walk into the shop, the books appear to reach impossible heights and stretch clear into the distance, an effect created by the perfect symmetry of the dark wooden shelves and the clever use of mirrors on the ceilings and walls. In an amphitheatre-like room for readings and lectures, the impression is amplified by the reflection of the curved wall in the mirrored ceiling; it feels as if you are completely surrounded by a rainbow of book spines. In yet another room, the books are arranged on thin columns placed randomly around the room like trees in a forest, with benches interspersed for reading. Again, a mirrored ceiling makes the shelves appear as if they are not just trees but towering redwoods.
Li Xiang, the designer of the store, said the idea was to get young people in the doors and encourage them to linger for hours over a book or a piece of tiramisu and an espresso in the bookstore’s café. On a recent afternoon, that was precisely what customers were doing; the shop was filled with 20-somethings flipping through novels, not a mobile phone in sight.
“I didn’t want it to be a traditional bookstore; I would rather it be like an art gallery,” Li said.
— Justin Bergman
Allen Ginsberg once stripped naked there for a poetry reading. Henry Miller hailed the place simply as ‘a wonderland of books’
PORTO, PORTUGAL Livraria Lello
For devourers of that delicacy made from text and pulped wood — better known as the book — the Clérigos neighbourhood in Porto satisfies every appetite. Book-lined wine bars (Café Candelabro), restaurants (Restaurante Book) and cafés (Livraria da Baixa) fill the district, which is also home to Livraria Lello, a stunning Old World bookshop stocked to the rafters with new and antiquarian tomes.
The 110-year-old structure could easily be mistaken for a church. Topped with spires, the finely wrought Gothic-style façade opens onto a soaring space with columns, ornate medieval motifs and a dazzling stained-glass ceiling that hovers over the marquee attraction: a sinewy blood-red double staircase that coils like a strand of DNA.
“The intention was to make an extraordinary building — a cathedral for the arts and letters,” said an owner, José Lello, whose great-grandfather was among the founders.
And like a cathedral, the bookshop attracts fervent worshippers — as many as 3,500 a day — who pay a €3 fee (about 115 baht). Harrison Ford and Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, who owns the Manchester City soccer team, were among last summer’s visitors, Lello said.
Some pilgrims are bibliophiles keen to immerse themselves in one of Europe’s most ornate bookshops. Many are disciples of the boy who has become Livraria Lello’s patron saint: Harry Potter.
According to bookshop lore, J.K. Rowling drew inspiration for her young-adult novels from the shop’s creaky interiors while teaching English in Porto in the early 1990s. At least two employees from those days recalled Rowling as a customer, Lello said.
Matilde Lindberg, the shop’s “tourism co-ordinator”, said there were “many similarities between our staircase and the one depicted in the Hogwarts school”, she noted, referring to the academy attended by Harry and his magician friends.
— Seth Sherwood
PARIS Shakespeare and Company
From its antique typewriters to the age-cracked tomes on groaning shelves, Shakespeare and Company, the legendary Paris bookstore, offers visitors a chance to step into a time capsule. The stuff of myth whispers from musty corners: Allen Ginsberg once stripped naked there for a poetry reading. Anais Nin left her will under the bed of the bookstore’s eccentric founder, George Whitman, who hosted legions of writers before he died in 2011. Henry Miller hailed the place simply as “a wonderland of books”.
That it has been ever since Whitman set up shop in 1951 at 37, rue de la Bûcherie, on the site of a medieval monastery facing the brooding towers of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. With its bohemian alcoves and sagging benches that double as beds for wayward writers known as Tumbleweeds, the bookstore has drawn millions of curious souls seeking to imbibe the spirit of a bygone time.
These days, though, Shakespeare and Company is trying to get a little more 21st century. Since Whitman’s death, his daughter, Sylvia, has worked to strike a balance between preserving the store’s legendary past and fostering a vibrant scene for modern works. A recent renovation of the ground floor gives prominence to contemporary writers, while another space houses a web team for online orders. A ramped-up events schedule features established authors, most recently Don DeLillo and Marlon James, the winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize. — Liz Alderman
SANTORINI, GREECE Atlantis Books
Amid the glitz and din of tourist shops on the vacation paradise of Santorini, a whitewashed staircase sinks into the earth. At the bottom, a stone doorway opens onto a Hobbit-like den. Inside lies a hidden treasure: thousands of titles of literature, poetry and short stories, plus children’s books and preloved books, sprawled over shelves fashioned from driftwood and discarded pallets culled from junkyards.
This literary cocoon is Atlantis Books, a quirky bookstore opened in 2004 on the island that legend claims to be the site of the lost city of Atlantis. Perched on a limestone cliff above the Aegean Sea, the shop has grown into something of a cult destination for travellers looking to relax under the Greek sun with a good read in English, French, Italian or other languages. Beneath the steady gaze of Naxie, the store’s calico cat, visitors will find rare and antiquarian books, new and used paperbacks, modern classics and troves of Greek literature.
“The only thing we care about is that the books are good,” said Craig Walzer, a founder and a US expat. At the age of 23 he had started the store originally as something of a half joke. Having fallen in love with the island, he filled a van in Cambridge, England, with books and friends and sojourned to the town of Oia, where they procured an empty building facing the russet sunset, installed shelves and books and began operating. — Liz Alderman
VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA Munro’s Books
Walking into Munro’s Books, nestled in the quaint Old Town of Victoria, feels a lot like walking into a temple — an ancient one, perhaps Roman or Greek. That’s partly because of the neoclassical design of the building, which originally opened in 1909 as a Royal Bank of Canada branch. Much of that décor is still evident, from the impressive columns on its façade to its soaring 8m coffered ceiling.
But any religious impressions may also be thanks to the couple who transformed the space more than 30 years ago: Jim and Alice Munro — yes, that Alice Munro, the Nobel Prize-winning author. The store originally opened on nearby Yates Street in 1963, but in 1984 moved into the old bank space and has been a gravitational spot in downtown Victoria ever since.
The Munros no longer run the store; Jim Munro, who died last month, turned it over to a group of employees in 2014.
Among the books, Canadiana is unsurprisingly well represented (including an impressive array of First Nations literature and art books), as well as French-language books (“Nouveau!” reads a sign on one shelf ). — Dan Saltzstein
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA El Ateneo Grand Splendid
El Ateneo Grand Splendid is one of this city’s most remarkable landmarks, a sprawling space whose history mirrors the cultural development of Argentina. The grandeur of the former theatre belies the rather prosaic merchandise provided by the bookshop chain that owns the current incarnation: The open interior is surrounded by tiers of balconies that, especially when lit in the evenings, make it easy to imagine the ballet and opera and tango performances of a century ago. Later it became the first cinema in Buenos Aires to show “talkies”, and some films were accompanied by live tango orchestration. It even had its own radio station, LR4 Radio Splendid, which began broadcasting in 1923.
The building had been falling into disrepair when it was converted into a bookstore by the El Ateneo chain in 2000; the work was carried out by the studio of Buenos Aires architect Fernando Manzone, which was careful to leave the majority of architectural flourishes intact. The second and third floors, once balconies and boxes that held an audience, are still supported by ornate pillars and are now lined with books and dotted with comfy chairs for reading. The domed ceiling, frescoed by Nazareno Orlandi, remains. — Nell McShane Wulfhart