Looking for a new bookshop haunt in a city near you? This year, we’ve published popular guides to some of the best bookshops around the world. Here are the recommendations of 2015, all written by LSE Review of Books contributors.
Do you have a favourite bookshop? If there’s a bookshop that you think other students, alumni and academics should visit when they’re undertaking research or visiting a city for a conference, then now’s your chance to tell us all about it in 2016.
As part of a regular feature on LSE Review of Books, we’re asking alumni, academics and students to recommend their favourite two or three bookshops in a particular city, continuing this exciting online series for our book-loving community of readers the world over.
Email us now if you’d like to contribute: lsereviewofbooks@lse.ac.uk
York, United Kingdom
Canan Bolel showed us around the best bookshops in York, a city that specialises in secondhand and antiquarian books set against the perfect architectural backdrop of narrow streets, gothic cathedrals and thirteenth-century walls.
Image Credit: York Minster (Dirk)
Tirana, Albania
Following forty-five years of isolation, Albania is emerging onto the European stage with a revamping of the capital, Tirana, situated at the foot of Dajti Mountain. Paulo Rui Anciaes explored the bookshops to be found in a city conducive to relaxation, coffee and a xhiro (the act of walking around town at the end of the day in the company of others).
Image Credit: Skanderbeg Square in Tirana, Albania (Lassi Kurkijärvi)
Edinburgh, Scotland
As a new visitor to the city, Canan Bolel took us on a rain-drenched journey through the bookshops of a literary city associated with such authors as Muriel Spark, Alexander McCall Smith, JK Rowling and Ian Rankin.
Image Credit: Stormy Calton Hill, Edinburgh (Andy Smith)
Frankfurt, Germany
With Frankfurt typically associated with big money, this guide showed us an alternative side to the city: its literary scene. The location for an annual book fair and the headquarters of a leading German publisher, Frankfurt boasts a number of admirable bookshops, introduced to us here by Felix Simon.
Image Credit: Frankfurt, Germany (Carlos Torres)
Granada, Spain
On 1 December 2014, Granada was named a UNESCO City of Literature. Isabel López Ruiz takes us on a bookshop tour of one of Spain’s most important literary centres: the birthplace of renowned poets like Fray Luis de Granada; the alma mater of Spain’s most important twentieth-century poet, Federico García Lorca; and an inspiration for literary giants like Washington Irving.
Glasgow, Scotland
This list takes in three bookshops that are all in close proximity to each other in a part of Glasgow made famous recently by the unveiling of Partick Thistle football club’s grotesque sun-monster mascot, Kingsley. Kingsley was designed by Turner Prize nominee David Shrigley, who started supporting his local team whilst studying at Glasgow School of Art. Between the art school and the University of Glasgow is an area dense with bookshops that are full of character. Steven Harkins introduces us to three of the best.
Image Credit: Glasgow City Centre from the Lighthouse Tower (Tomek Augustyn)
