My Best Parisian Bookstore
While I’m sure that Parisians have all sorts of private vices – downing a whole bag of Picard crème puffs in one sitting while watching Danse Avec Les Stars, perhaps? – in public the people of Paris seem like such a high-minded, literary bunch.
Along the Seine, Parisians pack onto park benches to read and sun themselves. In cafes, paperbacks are a popular pairing with afternoon aperitifs. While walking through the Tuileries recently, I even spotted a man reading Rimbaud aloud to himself, furiously underlining and annotating as he went. I, meanwhile, frequently fall asleep while watching old episodes of Gilmore Girls.
But on the days that the better half of my nature prevails, I relish being out in the world, reading and strolling in equal measure. And so, whenever I’m here, I enact a Parisian version of my quest to find the best New York bookstore for me – wandering the city in search of both my top Paris bookshop and my more aspirational (aka Frencher) self.
I found some early contenders during my first trip of 2018. First, the Librairie Voyageurs du Monde, a travel bookshop in the 2nd with a dedicated map room and two of the most gorgeous spiral staircases I’ve ever seen (and this is a city positively overrun with spiral staircases).
Second, the Librairie Galignani. Though unfortunately located along the Louvre-adjacent strip of tourist trap crap, it’s a dream inside – boasting a huge atrium with two stories of books, a giant skylight, special editions everywhere, and an enormous selection of English language books. Both of these places have some of the traits I prize most in a good bookstore – architectural interest, comfy spots to sit, and a distinct point of view.
But in the end, my favorite Parisian bookstore is a much more obvious choice – Shakespeare and Company.
It might be because Anais Nin once romantically described it (and its owner) as “Not too steady on its foundations, small windows, wrinkled shutters. And there was George Whitman, undernourished, bearded, a saint among his books, lending them, housing penniless friends upstairs, not eager to sell.”
Or it could be because I’m midway through A Moveable Feast and have discovered that Sylvia Beach’s 1920s-era iteration of the store served as a lending library not just to Ernest Hemingway, but also to Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot, Djuna Barnes, and Gertrude Stein. Her shop was ultimately shut in 1941 when she refused to sell her last copy of Finnegan’s Wake to a Nazi officer.
Or it may be because the shop, which Whitman described as a “socialist utopia masquerading as a bookstore,” has been refuge to 30,000 “Tumbleweeds” over the years – Whitman’s term of endearment for the impoverished would-be writers who passed through Shakespeare and Company’s door looking for a bed.
Or it might simply be because it was my first Parisian bookstore, and is therefore inextricably linked to my own memories of summer, of love, and of living from a backpack.
No matter the case, this is the bookstore I return to again and again. It’s the bookstore that transports me to another time, the bookstore that makes me feel more alive, the bookstore that’s worth elbowing past every other tourist in Paris to explore. And, ultimately, it’s the bookstore that brings me a little bit closer to my ideal Parisian self. The sort that reads Allan Ginsberg instead of watching Gilmore Girls.
