I loved this book! It was delightful, full of interesting places, facts, and people, including background history for many of them. Very easy to read in short bursts - pick it up and read about a bookshop or two, or read a whole country's 'section', or a letter from an author about bookshops. . . - or just sit down and sink into bookshop after bookshop.

In fact, the only downside to the book is that I now have a terrible need to take a tour of the globe and visit many of the places mentioned herein! ( )

This is essentially a book of anecdotes as the author travels around visiting different unique bookshops, interrupted every so often by a short 1-2 page interview with an author about a bookshop experience, or a page of random trivia.
It runs out of steam once the author leaves the UK - it's pretty clear that she's much more familiar with the UK shops than the continental europe or north american ones, since the anecdotes become less and less substantial. Might have been better off limiting scope to the UK.

That said, it's a fun read, especially if you're the sort of person who is into reading. If you're reading a book about books presumably you are also in this category. I enjoyed my time with it. Spent a good deal of time on tripadvisor looking at photos of some of the places described, too. Every one I checked was still open, ten years after the book was published. Makes me glad. ( )

A celebration of bookshops/bookstores all over the world, featuring profiles of specific new and used bookstores, random snippets of interesting bookish facts, bits of interviews with booksellers, and short pieces from a variety of authors talking about their favorite bookshops, their dream bookshops, and the bookshops that shaped their lives.

Actually, I say "all over the world," but that's a little bit misleading, as the book really doesn't make much of an attempt to be equally inclusive of bookstores from all over. By far the largest and most detailed section is on bookshops in the UK, where this volume was published, and which the author clearly has far and away the most personal knowledge of. Most parts of the non-English-speaking world, by contrast, have only a few shops featured, with just a paragraph or two supplying some interesting facts about them. So those expecting something truly exhaustive and international, as opposed to something a bit more scattershot and personal, might find themselves disappointed. Fortunately, I didn't have any strong expectations one way or another, and I like scattershot and personal just fine.

You absolutely do have to be someone with bookstores in your soul to properly enjoy it, though. I mean, there's not huge amounts of substance here, and I suspect anyone else is likely to get bored pretty quickly of yet another description of bookshop decor or yet another earnest declaration about the satisfaction of holding real paper books. But I think it's safe to say there are a lot of us here on LT who do qualify as the right audience for this sort of thing. And I know it made me feel dreamily excited to imagine myself walking among all those varied shelves, and nostalgic for every bookstore I've ever been inside, and pleasantly itchy with the desire to go find some overstuffed secondhand bookshop to explore right now. Ah, I can almost smell the ink and paper... And it doesn't take any more than that to make me happy, really. ( )

Profiles some interesting bookstores, but completely shortchanges a lot of others. ( )

In this book, Jen Campbell travels the world, visiting different independant bookshops & then writing about them. If travel ever becomes more environmentally friendly/ sustainable (& the next pandemic isn't around the corner) I'm going to do a world bookshop tour & this book will be my travel guide!