Do You Read Me? – Bookstores Around The World (Gestalten, Berlin 2020)
I really like books and, of course, bookstores. In fact, I like books about bookstores. I’ve already written about bookstores on BogiWrites before and now I’d like to share a very nice collection with you again. The German Gestalten Publishing House released the album Do You Read Me? in 2020, which featured beautiful bookstores from all over the world.
In addition to the well-known shops such as the Strand in New York and the Shakespeare & Company in Paris, specialties such as the headliner Do You Read Me? bookstore in Berlin focus on international magazines, Powell’s Books, the largest independent bookstore in the world (the largest bookstore is a Barnes & Noble store in New York) or the El Ateneo Grand Splendid in Buenos Aires, which was formed in an old theatre.
The book also shows that there are bookstores all over the world: in Iceland, where frostwork sit on the window of the Bókin second hand bookshop, behind a red door in Taiwan (VVG Something) or on the 52nd floor of a skyscraper in Shanghai, as in Books Over The Clouds.
An extreme case of specialization is the Morioka Shoten in Tokyo, which sells only one book. A different title every week. However, most bookstores want customers to feel free to loose themselves between the shelves and to have a different experience instead of buying impersonally online.
In the book, we can also read essays from people who spend their entire lives among books, such as the director of the Frankfurt Book Fair or the poet-writer Jen Campbell, whose experiences as a booksellers appeared in the Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores.
The main message of the book is that the function of bookstores is not limited to trading books, their more important task is to preserve and mediate culture and diversity. They are islands of democracy in places where peace can only be found in books.
