My top 5 bookstores in the world (so far)
If you know me, both in real life or online, you know that I love reading. It’s one of my greatest hobbies and I dedicate a lot of my spare time to it. I wish I could spend more time reading. I wish I could read all the books (well, not literally all the books. 120 Days of Sodom, for example, that’s a book that I never ever want to read).
But aside from loving to read books, I love to own them. I find them lovely objects, and I tend to form a bond of sorts with the copies I’ve read (also, heresy alert, I sometimes annotate my copies, which makes them even more special and dear to me). This means that libraries are cool, but bookstores are a kind of heaven. Or at least they would be if it wasn’t poor, because I’m a university student with limited resources and expensive tastes. To be honest, sometimes I think the pleasure I get from going to bookstores and looking at all the books I cannot afford borders on masochism. But whatever, I still love me a good bookshop.
So, given my love for bookstores and that I do a “bookshop tour” of each city I visit, I thought it would be nice to share with you all my top 5 favorite bookstores in the world I’ve seen so far. These might not be the coolest, oldest, or the most interesting bookshops ever. If you are interested in that kind of stuff there are already fantastic books and articles written on the matter. However, these are my picks:
Librería Paradiso, Gijón, Spain
This first one holds a very special place in my heart. It’s hard to explain Librería Paradiso… let’s say it’s probably the coolest library of the region where I was born and raised. It is a small bookstore and vinyl store, with wood paneling and small upper level that you reach through a tiny flight of stairs. The owners couldn’t belong anywhere else, they fit perfectly in the store and they contribute to the atmosphere. And it’s exactly that atmosphere that makes this store stand up.
Paradiso is where you go to buy the tickets to every single concert that’s worth going to. It’s where you can find your history teacher in his coolest parka browsing through books about communism. It’s the kind of place you buy a book to “treat yo self” (cause, let’s be honest, this is an expensive bookstore). It’s the place where I bought “Jane Eyre” and “The Grapes of Wrath” and “War and Peace”. It’s were you saw all the older girls buying their uni reads. It’s an aesthetic. It’s part of my youth. It’s just very cool, OK? Also, it has a great selection of books. So 10/10.
Librería Malpaso, Barcelona, Spain
As I mention earlier, I do bookstore tours of the cities I visit. I do take my bookshops very seriously. I do a bit of research, make a list of the ones that I must get too and try to plan it so that I do not end up walking the entire length of the city three times. But sometimes pearls appear that are not on the list. Random findings. And, oh my God, sometimes they are just the best. This happened with Librería Malpaso. It was completely casual. Serendipity. We even found it before starting our tour, on our way to a Gluten-Free Bakery for breakfast. Suddenly it was there. A bookstore. And, of course, I had to go in. I had to browse and see. And it was lovely.
With a clean, white, open space it offers a wide variety of rare books. They have a very interesting curation, and arranged in a most unusual way: by press. Instead of your usual “Spanish and Hispanic novel” vs. “Foreign novel”, or arranging it by language, or mixing it up together, or having a separate area for classics, etc., they had the books grouped for press. Which works very nicely, and looks very aesthetically pleasing, too. Plus, they have a lot of small, niche presses, which is always a plus. They even have a tiny art exposition up-stairs, for extra points.
It was a lucky find. It was my favorite bookstore that I saw in Barcelona.
This might be a strange pick. I spent very little time on this little bookstore near Pike Place Market in Seattle, I don’t even think I was there for more than 15 minutes, but it was enough. I wish I had had more time (and money). This bookstore represented the spirit I was hoping to find in downtown Seattle, with its walls completely covered with posters, their selection of cool, local, independent zines, stickers and bookmarkers, the customers, everything. Also, and this is a huge plus for me, they have a selection of cheap editions (I was very tempted to buy a Dover Thrift Edition of The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells). Can we please take a moment to talk about the importance of cheap editions? They are great. They offer affordable reads. I just love them. I love the utterly ugly Wordsworth classics, and the surprisingly aesthetically pleasing Dover Thrift Editions (the old ones, the new blue ones are very meh). And I wish all bookstores had a selection of this kind of edition.
So, yeah, Left Bank Books won my heart. It made me feel like I was just another Seattleite browsing for edgy reads, and if that is not reason enough to be included in my top 5 then I don’t know what is.
Powell’s City of Books, Portland, USA
Powell’s, well, it’s just a different level. It’s an experience of its own. I mean, the thing takes up a whole city block. It has about 6,300 m². of books! They have around 3,500 different sections. For Christ’s sake, the thing is huge. It’s not like they try to fool anybody with the name; it really is a city of books.
Powell’s was probably the epicenter of my (short) visit to Portland. And not only the City of Books, although I might have spent over 2 hours browsing their selection (and I say might cuz I did lose the track of time there), I also visited two of their other smaller bookstores.
I don’t really have much else to say. Just make sure you visit if you are in the Portland area. It is so worth.
This choice might seem a bit odd cuz, you know, they are a chain of bookstores with over a hundred stores located in 17 different states. But trust me, you are gonna love Half Price Books if you don’t know them already. They, just as Powell’s City of Books, do honor to their name, and they sale books for half their price (well, more or less, depends on the book). And if that doesn’t appeal to you, then you are past saving and I have nothing else to offer you.
Used books are their main thing, but they also offer cheap editions printed by themselves under the “Hackberry Press” and, what seemed to me, not-used books from old editions that have been replaced by a new print or something of that sort. In any case, they are the paradise of the budget booklover, and I wish so hard that something similar existed in Spain.
And, and they also have records, movies, stationary and miscellanea (gosh, how I regret not buying that Jesus action figure). It’s just great.
I hope I get to visit new places soon, so that I might continue to share my passion for bookstores with you. Meanwhile enjoy your reading and show some love to your local bookstores!
