Spanish writer, academic and literary critic Jorge Carrión, for whom a bookshop is "the perfect place to understand the world," picked "five bookshops that globetrotting bibliophiles should put on their bucket list" for ABC Arts' The Bookshelf.
"When you enter a bookshop you discover a kind of country--a little world--and you can find different aspects of the history of the world, and also of the present time," said Carrión, author of Bookshops: A Reader's History. "I know the library is more democratic than the bookshop, but the bookshop is part of the city. It is a private space with a public service dimension to the community that is very important."