Bookstore Bucket List

Salon.com compiled a list for “The World's Most Inspiring Bookstores,” and put together a slideshow (linked here) showcasing their fourteen choices.  They are in no particular order or rank, but some of the more interesting finds, I thought, included an ancient cathedral in the Netherlands now converted into a bookstore, a nineteenth century theater in Argentina, and an entire book town within the city of Tokyo - one hundred and fifty stores, not including mega-stores, and the major publishing houses all crammed into one district of a few streets. Unsurprisingly making the list is a personal favorite of mine, and holding position at the top of my own bucket list, Shakespeare & Co., Paris, France.

Here are Salon’s top fourteen, but definitely swing by their site and experience the slideshow.

1.         Daunt Books – London, England.

2.         John King Books – Detroit, Michigan

3.         Selexy Dominicanen – Maastricht, Netherlands

4.         Borges & Cortazar – Buenos Aires, Argentina

5.         Montague Bookmill – Sawmill River, Massachusetts

6.         Lello Bookshop – Porto, Portugal

7.         Jimbocho Book Town – Tokyo, Japan

8.         Shakespeare & Co. – Paris, France

9.         Argosy Books – Manhattan, New York

10.       Eslite – Taipei, Taiwan

11.       Powell’s Books – Portland, Oregon

12.       Azbakia Book Market – Cairo, Egypt

13.       Medival walled book village – Uruena, Spain   

14.       City Lights Bookstore – San Francisco, California

Did they miss your favorite?  Let us know!

Destination: AMSTERDAM (From JohnGreenBooks.com)

Recently, while perusing my usual line up of often-frequented industry sites, I stopped by Author John Green’s website and discovered that he had moved to the most famous city in the Netherlands to write and do research for an upcoming book. 

I am Jack's inflamed sense of Jeolousy.

While the invention of a fiction can exist exclusively in the imagination, I’ve discovered that Destination Writing can often produce some of the most vivid and transporting stories.  For example, when reading Looking for Alaska, John Green’s exploration of high school relationships and emotional conflict, you can almost feel the experience of being thrust into the teenage class system of Indian Springs School.  All the details and the nuances in the prose shine in such definition, you might as well be looking at a photograph.  The reason, you might not be surprised to discover, is that John Green actually attended the boarding school which provides the setting for the novel.  One can conclude that experience in a real, physical place only enriches the experience of reading about that place.

While in Amsterdam, John will be communicating with his brother Hank via YouTube (as they have for several years now) and giving very entertaining updates on both the experience of living in the city and his process of writing on location.  http://www.johngreenbooks.com/  - Highly suggested.