An insightful, educational, and erudite paean to bookshops.
A literate mappa mundi to bookstores.
This is the first of Spanish author Carrión’s books to be translated into English. He writes that “every bookshop is a condensed version of the world,” this book like a “cartography of a bookshop.” Entering this Borges-ian labyrinth of books, readers will encounter bookshops as “archaeological sites or junk shops,” police censorship, the lives and works of booksellers, reading as “obsession and madness,” and the “bookshop as the world.” This is no mere travel guide but rather a philosophical, reflective, wide-ranging inquiry into the world of books. Carrión began the first of his many voyages in 1998 at a bookshop in Guatemala City. He reminds us that the “oldest bookshop in the world” is in Lisbon, not far from his home in Barcelona. Along this journey, readers are guided by Montaigne and Diderot epigraphs as well as wisdom from a vast array of writers, including Goethe, Mallarmé, and Benjamin. The bookseller is a “critic and cultural activist,” and since ancient Rome, bookshops have been “spaces for establishing contact.” Carrión is excellent discussing Paris’ most famous shops, American Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare & Company, where Joyce’s Ulysses was born, and Adrienne Monnier’s La Maison des Amis des Livres. Both also functioned as lending libraries, art galleries, hotels, and cultural centers. Carrión sees bookshops as political bastions and recounts The Satanic Verses uproar, Hitler as bestselling author, Mao Zedong’s bookshop/publishing house, and book burnings. His trip across America includes visits to New York City’s Gotham Book Mart and the Strand, Denver’s Tattered Cover, Portland’s Powells, and San Francisco’s City Lights. The author also discusses the impact of the brick-and-mortar chains and Amazon, the “supreme Virtual Bookshop,” as well as the sad story of a 100-year-old Barcelona bookshop that became a McDonald’s.
An insightful, educational, and erudite paean to bookshops.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-77196-174-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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