Romance Wanderlust: Bookstores

Romance Wanderlust - a yellowed and burnt edge map with a compass in the corner, with Romance Wanderlust written across itThis month’s Romance Wanderlust comes to you from Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores by Bob Eckstein ( A | BN | K | G | AB ). This book features paintings of seventy-five bookstores from all over the world. It’s true that technically you can’t stay at them (bookstores you can sleep in will be a topic for another month) but I can’t think of anything more romantic than spending time at any of these places. Some are out of business now, but thank goodness many remain open.

Every bookstore in the book gets a painting, a description, and an anecdote, and there are extra anecdotes in the back. Some of the bookstores are large, like the opulent and amazing El Ateneo Grand Splendid in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is built in an old theater and patrons can take food into the opera boxes and read.

A painting of the theatre-now-bookstore in argentina, with gold walls, boxes for sitting and reading, and a general browsing floor where the orchestra and floor seats would be

Some are small, like Weapon of Mass Instruction, also in Argentina:

A tiny green tank on wheels, stuffed with books on shelves cut into the outside metal

Bookstores have launched marriages, as in Anthony Frost English Bookshop in Bucharest, Romania:

A young couple’s first encounter was by chance when they both tried to purchase the same book. But there was just one copy. They came back after some years, married.

And as in Burke’s Bookstore in Memphis, Tennessee:

Painting of Burke's bookstore, with a love story (printed below)

Full text reads:

Current owners Corey and Cheryl Mesler met at Burke’s. Corey was manager and saw Cheryl, a student at the University of Mississippi, at the counter buying Selected Poems of Leonard Cohen. He blurted out, “You’re buying Leonard Cohen! Will you marry me?” A year later Cheryl was hired at the store…two years after that they were married. The reception was in the store.

Which bookstore do you find most romantic?

Powell’s, in Portland, Oregon, where you can take your books into the coffeeshop and read them while you eat scones (as I know, having done so many times)? Literati Bookshop in Goa, India, where “they order you a lime soda from just across the road while you sit amidst the pile of books you have chosen?”

a small painting of the watermill bookstore in Scotland

The only thing I don’t like about this book is that not only is the foreword by Garrison Keillor, but it’s also not a very good foreword. Also there’s no table of contents, but the newest edition does have an index. That’s a small price to pay for daydreaming about browsing with my husband through Librairie Avant-Garde, in Nanjing, China, which has 300 chairs and is “the world’s largest hidden bookshop.” Or City Lights in San Francisco, California, a bookstore so fabulous that one patron secretly had his ashes stashed throughout the poetry room.

Or The Watermill Bookshop in Aberfeldy, Scotland (pictured above), or the Libreria Acqua Alta in Venice, Italy (pictured below), where many books are stored in watertight things that float, including barrels and a gondola:

A painting of the libreria that reads During a flood in February of 2015, shoppers browsed the store in two feet of water. Many of the waterlogged books like enormous old encyclopedias are no longer for sale but have been repurposed as furniture, walls, and even the steps to a unique staircase. There was an erotica section just as you walk in. Could have done without that - customer comment

I have no idea how many times my husband and I have had dates that consisted of sitting on the floor in bookstores. How I would love to visit all of these places. What could be more romantic?

Comments are Closed

  1. Last time I was browsing in Powell’s, a voice came over the loudspeaker:
    “If there is a minister or wedding official in the store, please come to the Gold room.”

    I can only conclude that a couple had suddenly decided that This Was It. They Had To Get Married Right Away.

  2. Kaz159 says:

    Carrie – this reminded me of the recent cinema release “The Bookshop” with Emily Mortimer & Bill Nighy. There was an armchair in that shop I could have curled up in for days!

  3. Kareni says:

    What a fun post, Carrie. And, @Evelyn M. Hill, what a fun announcement to hear; it does make one wonder.

  4. Melissa says:

    My husband actually proposed to me in a bookstore although he took me out to dinner later to do it again so “you don’t tell our children I proposed to you in a bookstore.” On our honeymoon we went to this beautiful bookstore and bought each other a book as our wedding gifts to each other. Thirty-five years later dinner and a bookstore is still our standard date. So yeah there is something about bookstores that brings out the romantic in people.

  5. No, the Other Anne says:

    @Carrie S Love this so much! For a future Romance Wanderlust, you might try the town of Lewes in Sussex, UK (if you haven’t already). I went for the castle, priory, and Anne of Cleves’ House, but I stayed for a wander in all the lovely bookshops.

  6. Ren Benton says:

    Buzzfeed did a bookish wedding list that included several bookstores and libraries:

    https://www.buzzfeed.com/alivelez/19-dreamy-wedding-locations-for-book-lovers?utm_term=.ak3z4XOjO#.tjwmbnW2W

    My local library is in a strip mall and still shows evidence of the grocery store that used to be in the space. It’s a wee bit less majestic than any of these options…

  7. EC Spurlock says:

    Thank you, Carrie! I’d love to visit all these places too. Unfortunately many of my favorite bookstores have closed, Like Avenue Victor Hugo in Boston and Oxford Books/Cup and Chaucer here in Atlanta (although Oxford Comics is still going strong and still the best comic shop in the south, IMHO.)

    Another of my favorites is still extant, though: Whitlock’s Book Barn in (if I remember correctly?) Bethel CT. It’s an entire old farm that has been overtaken by books. The main offices and special editions are housed in the farmhouse, paperbacks are stored in the feed racks on the side of the barn, the main barn itself houses vintage hardbacks, and the loft features maps, prints, and ephemera. It’s where I got my complete set of 1903 editions of Louisa May Alcott in matching bindings for about $25.

  8. Lena says:

    I’ve been to El Ateneo Grand Splendid several times but that is the perk of living in Buenos Aires

  9. Louise says:

    @EC Spurlock
    It’s where I got my complete set of 1903 editions of Louisa May Alcott in matching bindings for about $25.

    :: wanders off sobbing brokenly ::

    When I went to investigate Bookstores at Amazon, I was presented with a list of related suggestions. One title was Women Who Read Are Dangerous … which set me to sobbing brokenly all over again because why, oh why, didn’t I think of that title first?

  10. EC Spurlock says:

    @ Louise, Google them, they may have more!! That’s the wonderful thing about New England, families stay in the same house for 300 years and they are all hoarders so you never know what you’re going to find. I’ve gotten everything from mint condition Edison recordings to Photoplay magazines with Rudolf Valentino on the cover to an 1863 edition of the London Times at yard sales, let alone estate buyers like Whitlock’s.

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