Read the Room

EVEN THE HUMBLEST BOOKSHOP IS A WONDER OF DISCOVERY THE INTERNET CAN’T TOUCH. FIVE OF THE WORLD’S MOST RENOWNED ONES ARE LOVELY CITADELS OF LITERACY, WOWS OF BROWSE

By Rita Guarna

If you stopped going to bookstores, you’d save some time—and you could still read. Click away on screen, have books delivered or e-books sent to your device, and rely on computers’ all-knowing artificial intelligence to tell you what you’ll want to read next.

Ah, but maybe there’s a tiny spark in you that Big Data hasn’t figured out yet. Fact is, a great “brick-andmortar” bookstore does more than show and sell. It’s a stethoscope to the beating cultural heart of the city it calls home. The sheer profusion of what it displays— the lush, multi-colored, endlessly various array of it, and the knowledge that you’ll never have time to read it all—can be daunting and inspiring and nourishing in a way that tech, for all its wonders, hasn’t a clue about. Any book, fiction or nonfiction, is a prolonged, intimate encounter with its author, and with a tale or topic that engages that author’s passion. Behold all the possibilities! The passions! Even you don’t know what you really want, or what you’ll find.

Explore a city without visiting its bookstores? Why, you’d miss a special experience, whatever the continent. The chance to inhale the aroma of aged rectos and versos, sweep your fingers across the spines in a packed stack, thumb the creamy-white pages of a freshly published novel whose publication was the author’s dream. In a bookstore it may take you just minutes to find what you need (or for it to find you). If you’re lucky, it can take an hour or two.

Yes, some independent bookstores have closed in the face of the competitive pressures of our digital age. Others have innovated, staging literary events and selling coffee and chocolate to go with your good read. But the world’s truly great bookstores remain revealing cultural destinations in themselves, where making purchases is only part of the appeal. In Bookstores: A Celebration of Independent Booksellers (Prestel), photographer Horst A. Friedrichs and author Stuart Husband conduct a visual tour of some of these treasure troves of knowledge and imagination. They’re housed in both historic landmarks and modern architectural marvels, some with stacks that extend for miles and others with collections so rare that many consider their existence a myth. They beckon.

You could stop going to bookstores, but in a word, don’t. And don’t miss these five legendary ones.

The Strand, New York City, U.S.A.

In a city filled with landmarks, this 94-year-old East Village bookstore is one of the most cherished. That’s hard to imagine in a town where business, finance and all things tech are the names of the game, but perhaps New York City’s hustle-bustle is precisely the reason The Strand is so beloved. People take a breather from the outside world to inhale the musky smell of the store’s titles, to go through the bargain carts and admire the collection in the Rare Books room. Nancy Bass Wyden, whose family has owned and operated The Strand since the beginning, estimates that it has 18 miles of books—along with access to estates in and around the Big Apple. Known for curating complete collections for customers, the store also does much of what the large chains do: celebrity book signings, children’s story times and sales of branded items such as bookmarks, candles and teas. HAMILTON 37

Phil, Vienna, Austria

The inspiration for this new Viennese standard, founded in 2004, was the basic living room, where books coexist with sofas, food, drink and great lighting. The refreshments at Phil change as the day goes on—coffee and juice give way to gin-and-tonics, but the reading takes place day or night. And what Phil lacks in tradition it makes up for in feisty literary spirit—witness the sign that declares: “Don’t classify me, read me. I’m a book, not a genre.” Staff here frequently interacts with the public, asking customers in person as well as on social media for new ideas and recommendations for the shop, says Phil owner Christian Schädel. They’re even open to birthday parties, family reunions and other social gatherings. “Phil is not the internet,” Schädel says. “It’s real life.”

John Sandoe Books, London, U.K.

Part of the success of this famed bookstore, which debuted in 1957, can be chalked up to something simple: giving everyone something they didn’t know they wanted before they walked into the shop. In fact, there are no markers and signs in John Sandoe Books’ aisles. The idea is not to create chaos, but to preserve what operator Johnny de Falbe calls “bookshop serendipity,” or coming across a piece that a browser never knew existed. And there’s plenty here to discover: Of the 30,000 or so titles, more than 29,000 are single copies. Sales have been helped in recent years by social media, which serves as a shopping window, particularly for younger readers. HAMILTON 39

City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco, U.S.A.

This North Beach bookstore was founded by the late poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and built in 1953 on the foundations of creativity and curiosity, two values that made up the postwar counterculture. It catered to both the hardcover and paperback populations, and provided nooks for all customers to sit and flip through pages. Everyone was, and still is, welcome at City Lights, an unusual storefront located on three floors in the unorthodox triangular Artigues Building. Principal/chief buyer Paul Yamazaki has kept the store relevant by learning to coexist with technology, presenting City Lights as the alternative way of thinking and being. “Now the book under your arm is a statement all over again,” he says, adding that the new trend is “being led by younger readers… perhaps as a reaction to devices and earbuds.”

Livraria Lello, Porto, Portugal

In the middle of one of the oldest European urban centers is this 115-year-old shrine to reading. Visitors to the city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, can get a sense of Porto’s history at Livraria Lello, where a stained-glass skylight, wood carvings and spiral staircase turn back the clock to a neo-Gothic age. And for all the focus on history, new generations of readers also flock here to rub elbows with the Portuguese literati. Harry Potter creator J. K. Rowling once lived in Porto and frequented Lello while writing the series, notes administrator Aurora Pedro Pinto. And a paid voucher system to enter the shop, introduced in 2015, actually boosted sales, especially among younger visitors, creating a positive precedent for the future of brick-and-mortar bookselling. HAMILTON 41