A review by vernalequinox
Bookshops by Jorge Carrión

2.0

This book, part travelogue part commentary, aims to celebrate bookshops and the role they play(ed) in the social and intellectual lives of their communities around the world, with a particular focus on the Spanish-speaking world. Although the author's aim is noble enough, it often reads like a collection of notes; the focus shifts abruptly from paragraph to paragraph within a given chapter so we go from comparing bookshops in a particular city to literary anecdotes to the challenges bookshops face today with the widespread use of the internet in the space of a couple of pages. These shifts, in my opinion, result in a meandering, unfocussed narrative that does not advance the overall aim of the book. Moreover, it seems to me that the book would have benefited from tighter editing; asides from the issues of structure, my copy contained some glaring typos (Alexandra the Great instead of Alexander the Great being an obvious example) whilst sentences tended to be overlong or grammatically awkward at times (the book is an English translation from Spanish), and images needed captions. Overall, although there were some genuinely enjoyable parts, the author's commentary tended to stay on the surface. The subject could have been explored in greater depth and focus, which, in turn, could have resulted in a genuinely more informative and enjoyable book.