Tuesday, March 1, 2011

The World's Best Bookshops?

An eccentric list of the world's greatest bookshops here at: BBC Travel. It doesn't include Foyles or The Strand or Square Books in Oxford, Miss, but it does have a bookshop in Beijing where you can't get anything that hasn't been approved by the Communist Party. Hmmmm. The best bookshop in the world they say is City Lights in San Francisco, which I did a reading at once so I'm not complaining about that, but still I am curious about what criteria they used to compile this wilfully strange selection. Of course you're wondering what I'd pick (or at least in my solipsistic imagination I think thats what you're wondering)...well, off the top of my head, I'd say:
1. Foyles, London
2. The Strand, New York
3. No Alibis, Belfast
4. City Lights, San Francisco
5. Square Books, Oxford, Miss
6. The Poisoned Pen, Scottsdale, Az.
7. The Tattered Cover, Denver
8. Blackwells, Oxford, England
9. Shakespeare and Company, Paris
10. The Educational Bookshop, Jerusalem