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<\/p>\n[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]In the Caf\u00e9 Gluck on the outskirts of Vienna, in the fading years of the Empire, Jakob Mendel sits surrounded by heaps of catalogues and books. An itinerant bibliophile denied a license for permanent trade, he sets up at a table when the caf\u00e9 opens and stays until closing, his portable bookshop a secret except to the initiated. Even so, his book table is a mecca for booklovers and collectors, for Mendel is blessed with the magic of perfect memory and knows the contents of every book he sells \u2014 a mind stuffed fuller more than any expert, any librarian, any corporate whiz.<\/p>\n
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<\/b>In \u201cMendel the Bibliophile,\u201d a masterful and surprisingly contemporary story published in 1929, Stefan Zweig not only draws an iconic portrait of the bookseller but captures the essence of the perfect bookshop\u2014part shrine, part life-giving fountain of knowledge, part communal gathering-place.<\/p>\nStory Pedlars\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n
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In 4th\u00a0<\/sup>century BCE Athens, it was the rise of libraries that created procurers devoted to buying up books and selling them to public and private hoarders. In Rome, where the personal library became an indispensable part of domestic architecture, booksellers listed books for sale on the door posts of their shops\u2014 their t<\/i>aberna librarii<\/em>.<\/i><\/p>\n Scribes in medieval Europe were granted legal ownership of the material they copied and thus supplied copies of books on demand. Similarly, the first printers after Gutenberg became booksellers. For those who lived in outlying regions, books were sold much as Mendel conducted business: booksellers were pedlars, offering missals and chapbooks along with egg beaters and cures for rheumatism. It wasn\u2019t until the 19th<\/sup> century that a clear distinction was made between publisher (the producer of books) and bookseller (literary promoter and seller of books).<\/p>\n Bookshops\u2014bookstores to North Americans but bookshops to the rest of the English-speaking world\u2014sell books, but what makes them so dear to the hearts of book lovers?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But a bookstore is more than bricks and mortar, however beautiful. And it isn\u2019t just the fact that books are sold<\/em> here that makes bookstores such a beacon.<\/p>\n As novelist Ann Patchett confessed before she opened Parnassus Books<\/a> in Nashville, Tennessee in 2011, \u201c<\/span>I wanted to go into retail about as much as I wanted to go into the Army.\u201d What she did<\/em> want was to re-create \u201cthe bookish happiness of my childhood.\u201d She\u2019d grown up in Mills bookstore, a 700-square-foot shop\u00a0 <\/span>where \u201cthe people who worked there remembered who you were and what you read, even if you were ten.”\u00a0<\/span>Patchett wanted that kind of bookstore\u2014 \u201cone that valued books and readers above muffins and adorable plastic watering cans, a store that recognized it could not possibly stock every single book that every single person might be looking for, and so stocked the books the staff had read and liked and could recommend.”<\/span><\/p>\n Canada has its own\u00a0<\/span>writer-bookseller tradition. In 1963 Jim and Alice Munro\u2014that<\/em> Alice Munro\u2014opened Munro\u2019s Books<\/a> in Victoria, BC. <\/span>Pages on Kensington<\/a> in Calgary, Alberta, was started by novelist Peter Oliva in 1994. <\/span>The poet Alice Burdick and children’s author Jo Treggiari are co-owners of Lexicon Books<\/a>, in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.<\/span>\u00a0Last year, novelist Michelle Berry started Hunter Street Books<\/a> in Peterborough, a university town without an independent bookstore, and this year, Sheree Fitch set up a seasonal bookshop in her granary: Mabel Murple\u2019s Books Shoppe and Dreamery<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Likewise, Michelle Berry\u2019s shop<\/a> fills a hole left\u00a0<\/span>when the only independent bookstore in Peterborough closed in 2012. As one local author put it, <\/span>“The local lit community was a gang without a clubhouse.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n It is hard to parse the precise alchemy by which a bookseller turns a retail business into a vital community hub. Some stores are encyclopedic in All bookstores sell books, but the best of them are places where writers and readers converge \u2014 a local salon where great ideas are exchanged, where conversations are sparked and carried on over months and years, where cultures are spawned and nourished.<\/p>\n \u201cYou create books,\u201d concludes the narrator of Zwieg\u2019s story, \u201cto forge links with others even after your own death, thus defending yourself against the inexorable adversary of all life\u2014transience and oblivion.\u201d<\/p>\n And you visit bookshops, I would add, to feel that undying, steadying pulse.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1477364431886{padding-top: 10px !important;padding-right: 10px !important;padding-bottom: 10px !important;padding-left: 10px !important;background-color: #ededed !important;background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: cover !important;border-radius: 2px !important;}”]<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_separator][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]In the Caf\u00e9 Gluck on the outskirts of Vienna, in the fading years of the Empire, Jakob Mendel sits surrounded by heaps of catalogues and books. An itinerant bibliophile denied a license for permanent trade, he sets up at a table when the caf\u00e9 opens and stays until closing, his portable bookshop a secret except […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":959,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[157],"tags":[147,160,163,164,165,167,168,162,169,166,161,158,159],"class_list":["post-946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookshops","tag-alice-munro","tag-ann-patchett","tag-birchbark-books","tag-city-of-lights","tag-hunter-street-books","tag-lexicon-books","tag-mabel-murples-book-shoppe-dreamery","tag-munros-books","tag-national-memorial-african-bookstore","tag-pages-on-kensington","tag-parnassus-books","tag-stefan-zweig","tag-writer-booksellers","invicta_simple_style_entry"],"yoast_head":"\nA Place for Books\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n
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<\/a>\u201cThe way a specific story relates to the whole of literature is similar to the way a single bookshop relates to every other bookshop that exists, has existed and will perhaps ever exist,\u201d writes Jorge Carri\u00f3n in Bookshops, A Reader\u2019s History<\/i><\/a>, which opens with \u201cMendel the Bibliophile.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/13th_century_Dominican_church_converted_into_a_bookstore_in_Maastricht_the_Netherlands-300x200.jpg\")
<\/a>Is it because books themselves are beautiful? Bring them together in beautiful spaces<\/a>, and the result is inspirational. The Polare bookstore in Maastricht is housed in a 13th<\/sup><\/span> century converted Dominican church. The books in El Ateneo in Buenos Aires are stacked where plush seats once graced the Teatro Gran Splendid. The Librairie Avant-Gard in Nanjing, named China\u2019s most beautiful bookshop, is housed inside a government car park that was once a bomb shelter.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/http_2F2Fcdn.cnn_.com2Fcnnnext2Fdam2Fassets2F170424162926-parnassus-books-300x169.jpg\")
<\/p>\nClosing the Loop<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n
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<\/a>Bookselling is the end of the publishing process, and Ann Patchett isn\u2019t the only writer who has closed the loop between a writer and her readers. In the United States, novelist Emma Straub recently opened Books Are Magic<\/a> in Brooklyn. Judy Blume owns Books & Books<\/a> in Key West. Louise Erdrich sells books and Native American art in Birchbark Books<\/a> in Minneapolis. The most famous American bookstore owned by a writer is probably City Lights<\/a> in San Francisco, the brainchild of poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Munros-300x300.jpg\")
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<\/a>Fitch started her shop in response<\/a> to the threatened closing of the local elementary school. \u201cHow can I live here, become part of this community, and turn my back on this?\u201d she said. <\/span><\/p>\nThe Local<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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<\/a>Like Zweig\u2019s Mendel, the bookseller makes the book shop\u2014and turns a business into a “local.” Perhaps writers make good booksellers because they know books. They read widely. And the imprint of their taste can be seen on the shelves\u2014qualities shared by all the best bookmen and women.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/aHR0cCUzQSUyRiUyRmJsYWNrZ2lybGxvbmdoYWlyLmNvbSUyRndwLWNvbnRlbnQlMkZ1cGxvYWRzJTJGMjAxNSUyRjA5JTJGaGFybGVtLTE5NzBzLTEwLmpwZw-300x200.jpg\")
<\/a>their range of books; others mine a narrow band of literary ore, specializing in psychology, African-American literature, GBLTQ2 books, women\u2019s issues. Some stores set out comfy chairs, an unspoken invitation to sit and contemplate in the company of words. Others offer readings and launches, space where book clubs can meet, workshops convene. In the 1950s and 60s, the National Memorial African Bookstore, nicknamed the “House of Common Sense and the Home of Proper Propaganda,” became the reading room for the American Civil Rights Movement.<\/span><\/p>\nConvergence<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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<\/a>Print-on-Demand may mimic the one-copy-at-a-time bookselling of medieval scribes. Internet booksellers may offer millions of titles at once. Chain bookstores, like 18th-century pedlars, may salt their books with kitchen implements and candles.\u00a0<\/span>But it is the i<\/a>ndependent bookshops<\/a> that draw us like Mendel\u2019s table in Caf\u00e9 Gluck\u2014shops where the shelves reflect the taste of their owners; where the person at the till asks whether your aunt liked that Norwegian mystery you bought her last Christmas; where the staff know exactly the book you mean even though you can’t remember either the title or the author, only that it took place in England and had something to do with a giant, a literary book, but a fantasy, too, sort of; a place where, when you need a serenity break, you can just wander through.<\/span><\/p>\nWhat is your\u00a0Best Little Bookshop Ever?<\/h3>\n