Finding the best independent bookshop in a new city tells you almost everything you need to know about its intellectual life. We always make a point of doing this within the first 24 hours of any trip.
Step 1. Skip Google. Search results for ‘best bookshop in X’ will return tourist-friendly options and chain stores. Useless.
Step 2. Find the local independent newspaper or magazine’s arts section online. They will have written about local bookshops repeatedly. Their recommendations will skew toward shops with serious literary programming.
Step 3. Cross-reference with the international literary press. The New York Times and the Guardian both maintain lists of the best independent bookshops in major cities. These lists are reliable because the journalists writing them have actually visited.
Step 4. Look for shops that host author events. A bookshop’s event calendar is the most reliable indicator of how seriously its owners take the business. Shops with weekly events almost always have the best selections.
Our personal favorites worldwide:
· Shakespeare and Company, Paris, 5th — the obvious one but still wonderful.
· Daunt Books, London, Marylebone — arranged by country, like a travel-bookshop dream.
· City Lights, San Francisco, North Beach — the Beat poetry capital, still essential.
· Strand, New York, East Village — eighteen miles of books.
· Persephone Books, London, Bath — small, opinionated, focused on overlooked 20th-century women writers.
· Cărturești Carusel, Bucharest — arguably the most beautiful bookshop in the world, in a restored 19th-century bank building.
· Livraria Lello, Porto — touristy now, but the building is unmissable.
· Pan Tau Books, Lisbon — tiny, eccentric, perfect.
· Kinokuniya Shinjuku, Tokyo — for the staggering selection of Japanese literature in translation on the seventh floor.
· Atlantis Books, Santorini — built into a cliff over the Aegean. Worth the trip on its own.