There have been many bookshops marking all the pages of my life from childhood onwards. There was Mr Oxley's in Alresford, there was the first ever Hammicks, there were all the bookshops of Hay, there was James Thin in Edinburgh, the Libreria Aqua in Venice - each has a special place in my heart. But the one I love most is in Paris.
Shakespeare and Company sits across from the Seine, on a street slightly aslant from the Quai St Michel, and I loved it the moment I first walked into it in 1981. In those days (and probably still), you could work there for a bed in one of the book-lined upstairs rooms.
I did for a while, and it was a place of companionship, laughter, and above all, a shared love of books. It is, quite literally, a treasure trove, a mish-mash of the new, the secondhand and the simply arcane and archaic. I went back there today with my children, and they were immediately lured in and entranced by the smell of dusty paper, the feeling that the perfect book must be just around the next corner, or just out of reach up that wooden ladder.
For all that it is much more of a tourist destination nowadays, the old magic is still there. It has that indefinable Narnia feel which makes you believe that somewhere in there is a door or doors to another world. There are, of course, because that's what books are - but surely somewhere there's a tiny key, or a bookspine to rub which will take you somewhere else entirely.
Every writer who visits Paris has been there - and it is a great honour to be asked to read in the little upstairs room with the sofas and the book nook with a tiny desk and endless fluttering pieces of paper, covered in scribbled dreams. Some of those writers are even featured on the wallpaper...
There is a wonderful children's and YA section, where I was happy to see many of my lovely author friends featured (though sadly not me), and an invitingly padded alcove just perfect for a child to curl up on and read one of the pile of picture books which leans against the wall.
If you go to Paris, do try to make time to go there - and may you be as transported with delight as I have always been...(and take note of my favourite quote above)!
"If you’re going to select only one revolting, repulsive pirate book, this is arrrr-guably the best." Kirkus
My mother's eldest sister, Stella, is the only of the family still alive and is a sprightly 97 years old. She was born in London in 1916, which to the British forever means the year of the battle of the Somme. Stella lives in Oxnard about one hour north of Los Angeles, with her second husband, Bob. I have visited her every five years since the kids were small. On my very first trip Stella took us to Bart's Books in Ojai, Ventura County, California. Just a short drive from their home. The wonderful thing about Bart's Books is that it is partly an outdoor bookshop, something which would be almost impossible in rainy Britain.
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| Stella and Bob sitting in the yard at Bart's Books. |
Bart's Books has just reached it's 50th year and Stella wrote me a beautiful note, sending me a cutting from the Ventura County Star newspaper, featuring the bookshop and pointing out that it has just been named one of the 18 bookstores worldwide that book lovers must visit.
Bart's Books is probably the most quirky bookstore on the list and I've visited it twice. They leave books on shelves outside the store and have an honesty box which is a slot box on the front door. They used to have coffee tins on top of the shelves for coins and for a while people apparently just threw change over the walls into the open-air courtyard on the other side.
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| With Stella and Bob, 2012, Oxnard |
I then did a search for this list of the 18 best bookstores worldwide and here's
the link.Shakespeare and Company, Paris, is the other bookstore on the list I frequented when I lived in Paris for a year. But somehow it doesn't seem such a big find as it's only round the corner.
I did wonder about other book shops. How about City Lights in San Francisco, with the Jack Kerouac alley down the side and it's alternative, beat poet links?
But maybe I'm just thinking of my own list of bookstores that I've visited and loved. We went on two memorable holidays to Hay on Wye in the 1990s and the kids were very struck by the 'town with the books' as they called it. They loved rummaging about in the bargain bins while their grandpa read with total concentration.
It's very difficult to get me past any bookshop in any part of the world in any language. Books suction me towards them whether they are in bookshops....
or libraries
Or anywhere else really. Lists are never definitive. I might not have visited all the 18 bookstores on that particular list but I've had the pleasure of visiting a lot of wonderful book shops and book stalls all around the world.
What are your favourite bookshops?
www.miriamhalahmy.com
On this day in 1922, James Joyce’s Ulysses was first published in its entirety, although the publication history of the book is nearly as complex as the novel itself. Initially serialised in The Little Review from 1918, publication of Nausicaä episode led to a prosecution for obscenity and no English-speaking country dared to publish more, and risk further prosecution. However, shortly after arriving in Paris in July 1920, Joyce met Sylvia Beach, proprietor of the Shakespeare and Company bookshop and friend to modern writers. On hearing of the collapse of Joyce’s hopes of US or English publication, Sylvia Beach offered to publish the book under the auspices of Shakespeare and Company, to have it printed in Dijon by Maurice Darantiere, and to finance it by advance subscription. Joyce agreed at once. Here, we’ve picked one of our favourite extracts from the Oxford World’s Classics edition (pp.226-227).
Mr Bloom turned over idly pages of The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, then of Aristotle’s Masterpiece. Crooked botched print. Plates : infants cuddled in a ball in bloodred wombs like livers of slaughtered cows. Lots of them like that at this moment all over the world. All butting with their skulls to get out of it. Child born every minute somewhere. Mrs Purefoy.
He laid both books aside and glanced at the third : Tales of the Ghetto by Leopold von Sacher Masoch.
– That I had, he said, pushing it by.
The shopman let two volumes fall on the counter.
– Them are two good ones, he said.
Onions of his breath came across the counter out of his ruined mouth. He bent to make a bundle of other books, hugged them against his unbuttoned waistcoat and bore them off behind the dingy curtain.
On O’Connell bridge many persons observed the grave deportment and gay apparel of Mr Denis J. Maginni, professor of dancing &c.
Mr Bloom, alone, looked at the titles. Fair Tyrants by James Lovebirch. Know the kind that is. Had it? Yes.
He opened it. Thought so.
A woman’s voice behind the dingy curtain. Listen : The man.
No: she wouldn’t like that much. Got her it once.
He read the other title : Sweets of Sin. More in her line. Let us see.
He read where his finger opened.
— All the dollarbills her husband gave her were spent in the stores on wondrous gowns and costliest fillies. For him ! For Raoul !
Yes. This. Here. Try.
– Her mouth glued on his in a voluptuous kiss while his hands felt for the opulent curves inside her deshabillé.
Yes. Take this. The end.
— You are late, he spoke hoarsely, eying her with a suspicious glare.
The beautiful woman threw off her sabletrimmed wrap, displaying her queenly shoulders and heaving embonpoint. An imperceptible smile played round her perfect lips as she turned to him calmly.
Mr Bloom read again :
The beautiful woman.
Warmth showered gently over him, cowing his flesh. Flesh yielded amid rumpled clothes. Whites of eyes swooning up. His nostrils arched themselves for prey. Melting breast ointments (for him ! For Raoul !) Armpits’ oniony sweat. Fishgluey slime (her heaving embonpoint !). Feel ! Press ! Crished ! Sulphur dung of lions !
Young ! Young !
An elderly female, no more young, left the building of the courts of chancery, king’s bench, exchequer and common pleas having heard in the lord chancellor’s court the case in lunacy of Potterton, in the admiralty division the summons, exparte motion, of the owners of the Lady Cairns versus the owners of the barque Mona, in the court of appeal reservation of judgment in the case of Harvey versus the Ocean Accident a
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