Under new management

Hi all. Lorannen tells me that I'm now administrator of this group and it says so on the group page, even.

In the near future (said he optimistically) I will write some new text for the front page and see where we go from there.

I've cleaned out the spammiest bits of the group page, and am now trying to write some text to replace the rest. At the moment this is what I've got:

Bookstore tourism is about travelling to visit bookstores—whether you do so on an organised tour or just on your own. Do you go on road trips to visit bookstores? Do you collect lists of the most beautiful bookstores? Do you collect booktowns?

We would like to know about bookstores that are worth travelling some distance to visit, whether because they are beautiful, or unusually well-stocked, or quirky, or historically interesting ... Tell us about them.

Booktowns welcome too.

Any ideas for more?

Hurrah! Great to have you doing this.

But what's a "booktown"? I can make a guess, but I am not familiar with that term.

Oooo, wikipedia has a list of book towns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_town

No comments on my proposed new group page, so I've gone and done it. Further comments welcome, of course.

Looks good!

>6 lilithcat: Thank you!

A couple of thoughts.

I've been browsing the lists of beautiful bookshops again and one annoyance struck me: the descriptions of the beautiful shops don't always have much to say about the books. Perhaps that's understandable--after all, the blog post or news article is about "beautiful" not "books". I would particularly like some basic details about what kinds of books a shop stocks, and in what languages. In the case of a shop outside the Anglosphere, since I am (to my shame) an English monoglot, I'd like to know whether it stocks books in English.

There's some food for thought here: "The World’s Most Beautiful Bookstores, Gathered in One Place". Quote:

The first thing I noticed upon entering Livraria Lello in Porto, Portugal was its famed staircase. Curvy and red, it rises from the floor as if by magic. Word has it that J.K. Rowling herself was inspired by it when creating the world of Harry Potter and the magical library at Hogwarts. It’s no wonder Livraria Lello has made countless lists of the most beautiful bookstores in the world. I realized that at that moment, I was the person I often dread—a bookstore tourist. The bookstore I run in downtown Los Angeles, the Last Bookstore, is also a tourist destination and photo opportunity, as well as a neighborhood bookstore.

(From Katie Orphan, who runs The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles.)

Katie, I'm a bookstore tourist too, I suppose, but if your (or any other) beautiful shop has interesting books to sell at prices I can afford, I promise I will buy books and not just look or take pictures. In fact, I've been to your store and I did buy books, and didn't take any pictures. Of the 9 stores that attended the conference you describe, I've been to 5: The Last Bookstore, Shakespeare & Co., Boekhandel Dominicanen, Atlantis Books and Livraria Lello, and bought books in every one of them. What that all amounts to, I suppose, is that a beautiful bookstore still has to be a decent bookstore. The interesting case is Atlantis Books. It's small and not too easy to get to, but the stock is interesting and quirky and I found a few things there that I wouldn't have expected--like a collection of Les Murray's 100 best poems, selected by the man himself.

Contrariwise there are shops that even their best friends wouldn't consider beautiful but thrive because they are well stocked. I'm thinking of the likes of Gould's Book Arcade in Sydney and Chapters in Dublin, both of which I've been to in the last year and bought books in. They can also be destinations for bookstore tourists but perhaps people tend not to take so many photographs. People become bookstore tourists because they enjoy browsing in bookstores, after all, and browsing tends to lead to buying.

So bookstore tourism isn't just about visiting beautiful places. If that were all it was, it could just as well be tourism of some other kind. There has to be book-browsing and some point in doing so (so, for me, the English monoglot, books in English in reasonable number and variety). One ought to be cautious drawing general conclusions from the experience of Livraria Lello because of the Potter connection. Shakespeare & Co also has non-selling connections, because of its past as a "tumbleweed hotel". Either of them would be a tourist draw to some extent even if there were no books.

a beautiful bookstore still has to be a decent bookstore

Yes!

I'm an architecture and history buff, so I enjoy going to beautiful and historic places for themselves.

But when I go to a bookstore, I want . . . books! If it's an interesting* space, that's a bonus.

*It doesn't have to be "beautiful". For example, I don't think anyone would call Venice's Acqua Alta "beautiful"**, but it's a very intriguing space: http://www.librarything.com/venue/56345/Libreria-Acqua-Alta

** Okay, I'm wrong, whoever wrote the caption on the stores LT Local page called it exactly that!

Only now do I discover that Wikipedia has a page called “bookstore tourism”, which mentions the creator of this group. I wonder who wrote the article ...

Remiss of me not to have noticed that this group has a new member! So welcome, bks1953!

Another new member! Welcome mnleona!

>3 lilithcat: I assume Hay on Wye would be on that list? loved it there

>9 lilithcat: exactly! and some hole in the wall bookstores can carry gems of books!

It appears I have omitted to mention booktown Richmond, Northern Cape. It's not a patch on Hay-on-Wye.



Those buildings are both part of the same bookshop; there are several others in this street.