Online booksellers and eBooks are making it hard for independent bookstores to survive. Thankfully a handful of bookstores around the world are defying the online giants. They know that for many avid readers, searching for a book, then holding that book and slowly flipping through its pages is a tactile sensation no online purchase or download can provide.
There is a term for people who love books for reasons that go beyond the words they contain – how they look, smell, and what they feel like – and that word is bibliophile.
Vocabulary.com defines a bibliophile: as someone who possesses a love of books or a deep knowledge about them. They suggest the earliest use of the word bibliophile was in 1820s France, and it came from the Greek prefix Biblio, or “book,” and the word Philos, or “friend.”
If you find it challenging to leave a book store without buying at least one book, you consider books to be your true friends, and find you’re tingling with excitement when you enter a library or bookstore, you’re definitely a bibliophile.
I’m a bibliophile. And I’ve been one since I started reading as a child. As a kid growing up in the 1970s and 1980s (pre internet and mobile phones) I devoured books. My mother remembers during my teen years going to the bookstore often to purchase books to satiate my desire to read. I’m forever stockpiling books to read, both purchased and borrowed from my local library!
During last month’s Book Week an annual event held in Australia, when schools and public libraries celebrate books and Australian children’s authors and illustrators, posts on social media showing school kids and teachers dressing up as their favourite book characters, indicates the younger generation, despite the proliferation of electronic devices, are embracing book reading. Nowadays, I continue to prefer reading ‘actual’ paper books, over the electronic kind. (My kids gave me a Kindle around 10 years ago, and I’ve barely used it!)
While writing a story for IcelandAir’s inflight magazine about Seattle being a UNESCO City of Literature I went down a few research rabbit holes. I discovered a handful of bookstores around the world have taken the sublime feeling book lovers associate with being near physical books to another level – by creating unique spaces to ‘house’ books.
Take a look at my selection of ten unique bookstores around the world. Places that have turned the fictional presumption that bookstores are dark, gloomy, and boring on its head.
Dominicanen bookshop – Maastricht The Netherlands
A few decades ago I was caught up in the crazy celebrations during Carnival in Maastricht I think I was too busy with the Dutch drinking games to visit the Dominicanen bookshop (previously Selexyz Dominicanen) inside Maastricht’s 700-year-old Dominican church. Two hundred years ago, the former Catholic church ceased being used as a place for religious worship. Over the years it’s housed numerous interesting objects, like reptiles and bicycles.
In 2006 it was transformed into a bookstore. Church pews were replaced with numerous bookshelves. Imagine selecting a book and finding a quiet enclave underneath the soaring arches to sit and read. A divine experience!
Obviously, you don’t need to be a book lover to appreciate this magnificent old church building that’s been restored and given a new lease of life. There’s even a cafe in the choir, where you could sing for your food if you felt inspired!
Cafebreria El Pendulo – Mexico City
Polanco is one of the prettiest neighbourhoods in Mexico city and where you’ll find the Cafebreria El Pendulo on Alejandro Dumas Street. This bookstore is one in a chain of city bookstores. A curving staircase with green handrails takes you to the upper level where books and green living plants happily co-exist inside the 1940s art deco house.
Livaria Lello – Porto Portugal
The art nouveau facade with stained glass windows and pinnacles of the Livraria Lello bookstore belies what is inside.
Opened in 1906 by brothers José and António Lello and designed by architect Xavier Esteves, the bookstore’s curvaceous red stairway with an ornate wooden banister and panels – nicknamed the “ the stairway to heaven” – connects to a gallery on the first and second floor. Light flows into the ample space from large stained glass windows with the motto Decus in Labore and a monogram of the owners. Don’t forget to look up at the decorative ceiling as you look through the bookshelves.
Livraria Lello is a tourist destination in Porto. The owners have taken advantage of its popularity and now charge an entrance fee (which can be recouped if you purchase a book).
The Last Bookstore – Los Angeles California
Over two floors and 22,000 square feet (2,043 square metres) in the Spring Arts Tower on 5th and Spring in downtown Los Angeles, you will find California’s largest used and new book and record store the Last Bookstore. If you can’t find that special book from over 250,000 new and used books, you’ll likely enjoy taking a look around.
The building in its heyday housed an old bank. There are a few bank vaults remaining – filled with, you guessed it – books! Visitors happily wander around the building exploring all the book displays including the winding colourful book tunnel. Their unique book ‘architecture’ is a novel twist on how to store and display books. Clever, cool, different, and definitely Instagram-able.
Owner and operator Josh Spencer said he he’s handled over 5 million books in the time he’s been part of this unique business. Go Indie bookstores!
The Libraria da Vila bookstore – Sao Paulo Brazil
In the São Paolo metropolitan district of Jardins on a street called Alameda Lorena is a grey building with a striking facade. Inside is the architecturally designed Livraria da Vila Bookstore a three-level space filled with over 50,000 books.
After Brazil’s military dictatorship, Brazilian couple Aldo Bocchini and Miriam Gouvea founded the flagship store, Livraria Da Vila in 1985 in the district of Vila Madalena. Samuel Seibel, an ex-journalist, avid reader, and book collector, purchased the Livraria da Vila Madalena bookstore in 2002.
Seven years later, Seibel launched the second Livraria da Vila bookstore on Lorena street. São Paulo architect, Isay Weinfeld was hired to design something functional and attractive as the bookstore would be competing with many art galleries and museums in the Jardins district. Weinfeld has a reputation for designing dramatic entries to his buildings. He came up with a main entrance design utilising pivoting bookcases that swing open to reveal the interior – a three-story bookstore designed in atrium style. Inside low ceilings and indirect lighting create a mood and comfortable furnishings are placed strategically for customers to sit and read. Upstairs there’s an in-house café for those wanting to snack or grab a coffee.
Barter Books Alnwick – Northumberland England
One of the largest second-hand bookstores in Britain, Barter Books is inside a Victorian Railway station. Home to the original Keep Calm and Carry on Poster, the restored station has a large room lined with over forty glass cases containing antiquarian books. There’s a café, open fires in winter, and a children’s room with enough toys to allow parents and grandparents to browse the bookstore freely! There’s
Open every day 9:00 – 7:00 including Sundays and all Bank Holidays (apart from Christmas Day)
(Buffet hours: 9:00 – 6:30 • Last Orders for Hot Food 5:00)
(Paradise Ice Cream Parlour 11-4)
Barter Books, Alnwick Station, Northumberland NE66 2NP
Word on the Water Granary Square London England
A unique bookstore experience, Word on the Water is found inside a 100-year-old Dutch barge, floating on Regent’s Canal. Nicknamed “The London Bookbarge”, sells quality second-hand and new books.
Extract from their Facebook page: “We have classics, cult, contemporary fiction, a large range of children’s books and art and photography, plus some quirky stuff that you would never think to look for but may be very pleased to find. Also a wood-burning stove, Poetry Slams, readings, and live acoustic music on our roof stage.”
In January 2022, the floating bookshop placed a public call for a ‘documentarian’ to follow the nine-month barge refurbishment project. If you’d like to watch some larrikin boat builders gather their collective expertise to create a very unique reno on a dilapidated old barge head over to Youtube Rebuilding Word On The Water – The Journey (Part 1 of 3). It’s an amusing story.
Granary Square complex, Regent’s Canal Towpath, London N1C 4LW
The Book Cellar – Campbell Town Tasmania
Between Hobart and Launceston, located in a basement below 1830’s coaching inn, Foxhunters Return, the cellars which once allegedly used to hold convicts now holds new and second-hand books. They also have a wide selection of “Just Tassie Books”.
Ada’s Technical Bookstore – Seattle America
Owners Danielle and David Hulton opened Ada’s in 2010. They focussed on three pillars of Seattle culture: food, coffee, and technically minded citizens. They moved to new premises in 2021, finding a house built in 1922 that had been converted into a retail space. They recycled any existing materials in their new design – old timber doors transformed into bookcases and novelty items.
Ada’s mission has been to support authors, scientists, programmers, and engineers. They’ve achieved this by hosting dynamic events, where presenters can showcase the many ways in which technology and science impact life.
Most events held at Ada’s are free and open to the public.
The Avid Reader – Brisbane Australia
Unlike some of the bookstores I’ve selected, there is nothing visually spectacular about the Avid Reader in West End, but it’s my favourite local independent book store in Brisbane.
Avid Reader opened in Boundary Street West End in 1997 and in 2004 moved slightly up the road to its current location at 193 Boundary Street. Over the years I’ve been to many in-store author events, held in the small courtyard out the back. In March 2015 they opened a children’s space next door named appropriately, Where the Wild Things Are
Avid Reader was named Australian Bookshop of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards 2021. If you’re in Brisbane’s West End area make sure to pop into the Avid Reader. In a popular suburb of Brisbane, the friendly staff will help you find a book from a stock that includes a wide array of Australian authors (and international ones too.)
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