Bookstore tourism

Figuring that others in LT would make bookstores a travel activity (it's that kind of crowd, eh?), who would have thought there's a book on the topic. And if that's not enough, tour groups! There's more on my member gallery under the eponymous tag.

I just found this group. I'm about to go on vacation and will report back with my tour of bookstores.

A couple of my favorite bookstores in Venice:

Libreria Acqua Alta: http://www.librarything.com/venue/56345/Libreria-Acqua-Alta (The description shockingly neglects to mention the cats!)
Edizioni Damocle: http://www.librarything.com/venue/108817/Damocle-Edizioni
Libreria Marcopolo: http://www.librarything.com/venue/108571/Libreria-MarcoPolo

Hmm, I notice that the creator of this group has been removed* (or removed himself), and that the "group website" has expired.

* perhaps because it appears that he created the group to promote his blog

Too bad, because the idea of traveling to bookstores is, in my view, a sound one.

I remember using LT to find bookstores in Rekjavik 10 years ago.

>5 MarthaJeanne: MarthaJeanne, I will be in Rekjavik next week. What do you recommend?

The people in Iceland love books. They publish a lot, but being a small country, they also import a lot, and many people read English. This was great for me, because in each section of the bookstores many of the books were in English. I live in Austria, so buying books in English is not always easy.

You're not going to be terribly interested in the US books, but you might run into books in English from the UK that you might not otherwise know about. So check the subject areas you are particularly interested in.

They also publish quite a few books about Iceland in English (and other languages). I love the Icelandic legend and folklore books I bought. I think it's gone now, but I also had a delightful children's book about animals on the roof. Flowers on the Roof There are Icelandic authors translated as well. I also have a good Icelandic cookbook in German.

I also bought several cross stitch books in Icelandic. There may be other crafts that depend more on diagrams than words.

The big bookstores in Rekjavik are obvious. I also visited a few used book stores that I found in LT local, but didn't find that they were useful for me. Museums often have a few interesting books, and the big yarn shop had pattern books for Icelandic sweaters in several languages. One, I recall, included directions for knitting a sweater for your Iceland horse. At least the book purchases and the yarn purchases sort of balanced each other - the books are heavy for their size, but the yarn takes up a lot more space than weight.

Thanks! Just landed. Venturing forth! 🇮🇸

Have fun, and eat some Skyr for me.

Disturbing. It looks as though the bookstore tourism website is defunct and the creator of this group has been removed. Still think it's a viable group though. What happens to the group when the creator is no longer around?

If someone wants to take it over, staff can change the administrator.

>12 MarthaJeanne: as I said in another thread, I've asked to take it over. We will see what happens.