The Quill #6: Recommended Reads #6

The Siene River is lovingly called “the only river in the world that runs between two bookshelves,” making it the perfect setting for this article’s inspiration novel, The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George. The novel’s protagonist, Jean Perdu, owns a bookshop on a barge that rides the currents of the Siene River along the streets of Paris. If books were medicine, Perdu would be the doctor: he cures his customers’ ailments with carefully chosen novels.

A bookshop on a barge, on the Siene River, in Paris. Could there be a more spectacular way to shop for books? Look through my top five list of Paris bookstores and decide for yourself!

1. L’Eau et Les Rêves, which translates to “water and dreams,” is a bookshop on a boat that may have brought some inspiration to Nina George while coming up with the idea for The Little Paris Bookshop. After all, it is a bookshop (and a coffee shop), on a houseboat, on a canal, in Paris.
2. Shakespeare and Company was stablished in 1951 by American expat George Whitman. It is a store with a rich history and the literary world’s idea of an A-list clientele, such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein, to name a few
3. Librairie Delamai-Paris. This is the oldest bookstore in Paris, and when faced with closure, the community came together to save it. Filled with Parisan tales as old as time, this shop will not disappoint!
4. Galignani was first a printing press with a reading room, then a bookstore, and it has always been family-owned! If you don’t find the book you’re looking for amongst thousands of others on their shelves, they will order it for you, even if it’s no longer in print. Now that’s service!
5. Les Bouquinistes of Paris, which translates to “booksellers of Paris,” is my favorite of the list. On the riverbanks between the Louvre and the Pont Marie, and on both sides of the Seine River, you will find 900 green plywood boxes filled with books for sale. Having UNESCO status, these individual boxes hold at least 300,000 books just waiting to be purchased. Located along the Siene for approximately 500 years, they were permitted to become fixed locations in 1859, and I can vouch for their staying presence.