A history of bookshops, an autobiography of a reader, a travelogue, a love letter-and, most urgently, a manifesto.
Praise for Jorge Carrión's Bookshops: A Reader's History
"The perfect merging of love of travel and literature."-Buzzfeed
"[Carrión's] purpose is to celebrate bookstores. And he does so by wandering the globe in search of those that play-or have played-a special role in the intellectual and social lives of their communities. They become Carrión's personal mappa mundi."-New York Times
"'Every bookshop is a condensed version of the world,' begins Mr. Carrión's literary and unabashedly sentimental exploration of bookstores around the globe . . . [Carrion] wanders through volume-laden aisles in Athens, Paris, Bratislava, Budapest, Tangier and Sydney, and invokes many other shops, both open and closed, telling stories about writers, readers and literary circles . . . By the end, you may feel poorly read-but well armed with titles and bookshops to visit on your own." -Wall Street Journal
"Carrión explores the fine lines between pilgrimage destination, touristy gimmick, and decent bookshop. This is the perfect book for those who feel compelled to visit every bookstore they see."-Publishers Weekly (Starred review)
"Excellent . . . entertaining . . . this quietly intelligent little book speaks volumes."-Michael Dirda, Washington Post
"Sublimely entrancing . . . brilliant . . . [Carrión's] Borgesian book-it can be opened at any point and read forward, or backwards for that matter-is not at all sad. To read is to travel in time and space, and to travel from bookshop to bookshop is an ecstatic experience for Carrión, a joy he conveys page after page."- Maclean's
