Why do bookshops matter? How do they filter our ideas and literature? In this inventive and
highly entertaining extended essay Jorge Carrion takes his reader on a journey around the
world via its bookshops. His travels take him to Shakespeare & Co in Paris Wells in
Winchester Green Apple Books in San Francisco Librairie des Colonnes in Tangier the Strand
Book Store in New York and provoke encounters with thinkers poets dreamers revolutionaries
and readers. Bookshops is the travelogue of a lucid and curious observer filled with anecdotes
and stories from the universe of writing publishing and selling books. A bookshop in Carrion's
eyes never just a place for material transaction it is a meeting place for people and their
ideas a setting for world changing encounters a space that can transform lives. Written in
the midst of a worldwide recession Bookshops examines the role of these spaces in today's
evershifting climate of globalisation vanishing high streets e-readers and Amazon. But far
from taking a pessimistic view of the future of the physical bookshop Carrion makes a
compelling case for hope underlining the importance of these places and the magic that can
happen there. A vital manifesto for the future of the traditional bookshop and a delight for
all who love them.
