Review: Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores: True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and Book Lovers by Bob Eckstein

4 stars for Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores: True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and Book Lovers by Bob Eckstein.

This is a lovely collection of watercolour paintings, descriptions and quotations on some of the world's most treasured bookstores.

The author who is also the illustrator brings readers on a virtual bookstore tour around the world. The tour package includes name of bookstore, city and country it is located, year of establishment to last known year of operation (to present when it is still in operation), a short write-up and any quote of interest collected from owners, employees or patrons. The tour runs from New York City to San Francisco, California to Birmingham, Alabama to Boston, Massachusetts to Chicago, Illinois to Cambridge, Massachusetts to Detroit, Michigan to Taos, New Mexico to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to Seattle, Washington to South Florida to New Orleans, Louisiana to Brownsville, Nebraska to Charlottesville, Virginia to Palmer, Alaska in the United States to Goa and Chennai in India to Buenos Aires, Argentina to Nanjing, China to Paris, France to Martin, Slovakia to London, England to Albuquerque, Mexico to Reykjavik, Iceland to Frankfurt, Germany to Porto, Portugal to Bucharest, Romania to Vancouver Island, Canada to Aberfeldy, Scotland to Venice, Italy and more.

Much as I will love to visit all these charming bookstores located all over the world, I doubt I will be able to. But I am not without hope. The one bookstore that will be mighty interesting to visit one day is perhaps the last bookstore introduced which goes without saying, is a bookstore named The Last Bookstore. How fitting it is to place The Last Bookstore as the last bookstore in this book! Founded in 2005, this bookstore located in Los Angeles, California, is one of the largest independent bookstores in the world with over 250,000 new, used and rare books in its collection. What makes this bookstore so unique is that the space it is now occupying was originally a bank and its underground vaults are now reading rooms.

I love all bookstores, big or small, independents or chains. Once I walk into a bookstore, time stands still. For this reason, every bookstore listed in this book fascinates me. Though some of these independent bricks-and-mortar bookstores have since closed down for good, it is still a wondrous thing to have them illustrated here to be etched forever in our memories. As for those that have survived the hard times and are operating still, my greatest hope is that they can remain so until the end of time.


Publisher: Clarkson Potter; First Edition edition
Publication date: 4 Oct 2016

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The local bookshop is the heart and soul of a community each one unique, each one filled with local characters, legendary stories, surprising quirks, and comfortable charm as readers, we cherish them as sanctuaries for learning and dreaming.

In The NY Times bestseller Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores, beloved New Yorker cartoonist Bob Eckstein has gathered the greatest untold stories from a seventy-five of the world s most renowned bookstores (both past and present) and paired them with evocative color illustrations of each shop. Here is a portrait of our lifelong love affair with bookstores that is at once heartfelt, bittersweet, and filled with good cheer.

*Blurb from Goodreads'

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