Francisco Garamona's bookstore in Buenos Aires, La Internacional Argentina, is more than just a book business. Writers, readers and culture lovers gather there to debate, chat copiously and help Garamona in his author's willing editions. It constitutes a personal and creative meeting point, as we see in the first chapter of the Booklovers series, which our collaborator Jorge Carrión has devised and conducted for the CaixaForum platform, open to all audiences.
We knew that many bookstores, in recent decades, have evolved to become centers of permanent cultural activity that, in addition to selling books, host presentations, conferences, increasingly reading clubs... The complementary activities, which have always been among the most prominent of them , have intensified.
What we also sensed – or had experienced personally – but appears increasingly documented is the importance of bookstores on a human level, as places of contact and coexistence, warm spaces that can achieve therapeutic virtues.
The sentimental approach to the subject has classic titles, such as 84, Charing Cross Road, by Helen Haniff, from 1970, which collects twenty years of royal correspondence between a British bookseller and a passionate American reader and writer. Or among us, the imaginary Sempere bookstore on Santa Anna Street, a magical center of the tetralogy of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books that internationally consecrated the longed Carlos Ruiz Zafón.
But some recently published works further support this personalist vision of what bookstore spaces can mean.
The Japanese Yatoshi Yagisawa has sold out editions of My Days at the Morisaki Bookstore and An Evening at the Morisaki Bookstore (Silver Letters/Navona), sets of traditional narratives centered on a small second-hand bookstore in the Tokyo neighborhood of Jinbocho.
In the narrow space, bibliophile searches, family stories, loves and heartbreaks intersect... The bookseller, Morisaki Satoru, “always dresses in worn-out clothes, wears old-fashioned sandals and has his hair so messy that you'd think he didn't. has never been to the hairdresser. On top of that, not only does he say bizarre things but, like children, he blurts out whatever is going through his head."
Warmth. The poet Alba Donati decides to open a bookstore in the charming Tuscan town of Lucignana, with 180 residents in stone houses dating back to the year 1000. Day by day she records the orders she receives, the reunion with her nonagenarian father, the internment of her mother in a geriatric center, the relationship with his daughter, the talks with the gardener about growing roses... He goes ahead and tells it in The Bookstore on the Hill (Lumen/Edicions 62).
The Argentine Paula Vázquez was encouraged to open the bookstore specializing in Latin American literature Lata Peinada with a partner, first in Barcelona and then in Madrid, with its own authors' festival. A demanding and challenging task.
It coincided with a desire for motherhood that resulted in two unsuccessful pregnancies and one that happily came to term. And at the same time, with the proposal to open a third space in Buenos Aires, which makes one wonder in The Bookstore and the Goddess (Lumen): “Can a bookstore, or two, or three, mutate like a living animal, fold to the moving line of sewing that we leave behind our steps?
Warm bookstores, warm dates. Last year, Dead Ink Books in Liverpool was able to open its new premises for Christmas thanks to the contribution of a mysterious donor, who was never known. This December, the Livres Enchantés bookstore in the French town of Chaunes has attracted attention for dedicating a workshop to Santa Claus.
And even the “feel good” author Jenny Colgan is triumphing on Amazon with her novels The Christmas Bookshop and Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop, both set in Edinburgh.
Beyond the difficulties of an activity with tight profit margins, and that requires notable dedication, the mythology and symbolism of the book business remains in the digital age with growing splendor.
End of the year
And from this special Culture/s of La Vanguardia, we say goodbye to 2023 with a panoramic proposal of readings that includes everything from the booming trend of confessional literature, to the recognition of one of the high-level books of the year, Rafael's Human Dance Argullol, with a substantial interview with the author; passing through proposals in genres of narrative, essay or illustrated books.
And like every year, we encourage you to spend at least part of your Christmas in bookstores, and enjoy them thoroughly.
