BOOKSELLER Bernard and his consiglieri, Manny, are brainstorming schemes to attract customers into Black Books: ”We can’t let them find reasons to leave – we can feed them! Lunch and dinner! … a gym … no, that’s a bit much.” Perhaps Manny should have suggested an attached Black Books Cafe to keep the punters in? Today’s beleaguered bookshops often have [...]
The cathedral-like Livraria Lello, at 144 Rua das Carmelitas in the Portuguese city of Porto, is so atmospheric tourists reverently lower their voices. Manager Antero Braga explains: ”The bookshop was opened in 1906 and designed to echo the monastic library tradition which preserved Portuguese culture during the Moorish invasion.” Carved trefoils adorn bookshelves, gargoyles peer down from corbels and a [...]
Mexico City’s El Pendulo bookshop chain’s newest inner-city branch at 126 Ave Hamburgo in Zona Rosa, has a vast range of English titles and a new cafebreria, Bukowski’s Piano Bar. It’s named after ”Skid Row” poet and novelist Charles Bukowski and also dedicated to ”All writers inspired by alcohol”. Bukowski’s 45 books are translated into many languages with addicted readers [...]
Buenos Aires citizens (Portenos) start the day in their local marble-tabled cafe with a large cafe con leche and a medialuna (croissant) – then chain-drink heavily sugared short blacks until late afternoon. Argentina’s capital is a literate, highly caffeinated city with copious bookshop cafes – the most spectacular of which is El Ateneo, in the transformed 1919 vintage Grand Splendid [...]
London is unrenowned for good value, good service or even good breakfasts but Foyles bookshop’s Ray’s Jazz Cafe has all three, with an ambience and prices for young backpackers on a budget. Foyles, a landmark at Charing Cross Road since 1906, was once renowned for its ”literary luncheons” and until the 1980s even Bernard Black would have found it a [...]
Selexyz Dominicanen, an 800-year-old church-turned-bookshop in the Netherlands city of Maastricht, was constructed in 1294 and, according to bookshop manager Ton Harmes, derelict since 1796 when the French revolutionary army dispersed the clergy to stable their horses. Another revolutionary conversion took place in 2002 when the Amsterdam-based bookshop chain Selexyz – with a tradition of bookshops in historical buildings – [...]
Barter Books is a grand second-hand bookshop housed in the former Victorian-era railway station at Alnwick, Britain, an hour’s drive north of Newcastle upon Tyne. It is one of the largest second hand bookstores in Europe and also has been described as ‘The British Library of secondhand bookshops’ – The New Statesman. Behind the cash desk – in the former [...]
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