Cambridge is populated by readers.
Driving through the soothing English countryside you might
not think about books for hours on end, but once you enter the city limits you
know at once that you’ve entered a region of enthusiastic literacy.
Reading and thinking.
You feel it billow past in the breeze stirred up by well-read bicyclists
swooshing past. You smell it in
those old pubs with well-read conversationalists downing a pint at the next
table over. You see it as students
and professors, tourists and merchants turn pages at every corner.
This special populace is served by a plentiful supply of
bookstores. The best is Blackwells
(subject of a future post) but even aside from Blackwells, Cambridge is rich in
bookstores. It is a bibliophile’s
paradise.
One of the bookstores, Waterstones, featured the poster
above with marvelously apt sentiment: Words
cannot do justice to the pleasures of a good bookshop. Ironically.
good links:
** Bookstore Guide:
an amateur guide to book shopping throughout Europe: http://www.bookstoreguide.org/
An incredibly ambitious and intriguing project to review
bookshops throughout Europe. The
section on Cambridge was a bit light, but one can spend quite a pleasant
afternoon exploring European cities through the guide’s bookstore reviews. The bookstore couple also visited NYC
but, alas, they did not realize that riverrun is just a half hour train ride
from midtown.
The Book Guide: http://www.inprint.co.uk/thebookguide/shops/location1.php?loc=East%20Anglia&locc=Cambridgeshire
An annotated
list of used and antiquarian bookshops in Cambridge
Cambridge University Press Bookshop: http://www.cambridge.org/uk/bookshop/what_we_offer.htm#
A store/showroom stocked with those fascinating books
published by Cambridge University Press / the place itself has a long literary
history
Waterstones: http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/
A nicely laid out store and an efficient website
for new books
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