
Argentina is the bookshop capital of the world - a_w
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/19/argentina-books-bookstores-reading
======
Pitic
Funny how omitting a few details makes it seem like it deserves the title.
While most of what it says is true, it fails to talk much about the "import
restrictions" that it briefly mentions: "Amazon does not have an Argentinian
site and import restrictions make it a bureaucratic nightmare to purchase
books from international internet sellers" This problem is not only one for
international sellers, but for international publishers. As a publisher these
days it is almost impossible to get into Argentina. As an Argentinian
bookstore it is prohibitively expensive to bring books from foreign
publishers. That's a huge problem and very far from what the linked text
paints.

~~~
aortega
You might be forgetting another source: used books. There are literally
millions here. Used-books shops are everywhere, sometimes there are entire
streets taken by them. You can find anything here, and everybody commutes
about an hour from home to job, the perfect time to read a book.

Also, anything more expensive than a book (tablet, e-reader, phone) will get
stolen and you beaten, so settle for the old book.

~~~
petecox
I can recommend Daniel Zachariah in Belgrano.

He's an English bloke who runs a 2nd hand bookshop out of an apartment.
There's a good selection of English and other foreign language paperbacks.

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alvarez01
I live in Argentina and I always buy books from an online bookstore located in
England, it is much cheaper. And I have a subscription to a local library to
read novels written in Spanish. The article is wrong when it says that "import
restrictions make it a bureaucratic nightmare to purchase books from
international internet sellers"; since books are not subject of import
restrictions nor taxes. Capital controls are why people cannot transfer money
to international bookstores and that's why they buy books from the more
expensive local bookstores. The language is another barrier.

~~~
edko
Do you receive them directly at home, or do you have to pick them up at the
Customs Office? I do not have direct experience, but, from what I read, the
process can be quite bureaucratic: [http://www.clarin.com/cultura/aduana-
libros-AFIP-restriccion...](http://www.clarin.com/cultura/aduana-libros-AFIP-
restricciones_0_1305469467.html)

~~~
epidemian
Argentinian here. Yesterday i received a package of six books from Amazon at
home. The package arrived 2 weeks later than Amazon's estimation, but besides
that everything went smoothly. No extra charges or anything of that sort.

~~~
hobarrera
This is merely anecdotal, and the results are really quite random.

You might get it two weeks later at home, or you might have to pick it up at
the customs at Ezeiza (about 3 hours trips from where I lived last time in
happened) six months later with a 50% tax. Other packages simply never
arrived.

Between the randomness, and the huge taxes added, average people don't even
consider things like buying in Amazon. And definitely not even close to a
scale of how it's done in the US.

~~~
epidemian
> This is merely anecdotal

Yes, it totally is. And i didn't mean for it to have any statistical
significance.

But anecdotal data can help. I took the "risk" of buying books on Amazon only
after asking other people about their (totally anecdotal) experiences with it.
And now that i've had a good experience, i plan to keep using it despite the
known problems. YMMV.

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vorg
What country has the least number of bookshops per person I wonder. During my
last trip back to my home town, Auckland New Zealand, I discovered there was
only one "large" bookshop left and it had reduced its sales area to a single
floor so calling it "large" was pushing it.

Then I read online last month " _Not so long ago, Aucklanders had three large
bookshops in the city centre. Whitcoulls, as had been the case for more than
four decades, occupied its landmark Queen St location, while Borders and
Dymocks were prominent. From mid-year, they will all be gone. It was announced
yesterday that Whitcoulls, Auckland 's foremost bookseller, would vacate its
flagship store_." [1]

That leaves one small bookshop in the CBD of a 1.5m population city. Any other
city CBD's out there like this?

[1]
[http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11441944)

~~~
Tiktaalik
Similarly the one big box bookstore of Vancouver, Chapters, just closed its
doors. They're supposedly going to find a new location downtown at some point,
but that does currently leave the city with no major book store in the CBD.

Even for small independent book shops I feel the city is lacking. There are
two great, tiny, shops that I'd recommend to visitors, but that feels like a
very small number.

~~~
petecox
Yeah I think I saw more bookstores per capita in Victoria and Kelowna!

I do remember a couple of good second hand book shops though, near W Pender
St, iirc.

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applecore
One word: Borges. Strangely, he isn't mentioned in the article, although his
influence pervades book culture, even to this day, especially in Argentina,
but also abroad.

~~~
RodericDay
I really enjoy a lot of Borges' work, but this is nonsense.

His literature is respected across the aisle, but also considered to be very
right-wing (he was pro-military dictatorships, anti-feminist, etc.)

To chalk a majority of Argentinean literary culture to him would be to
severely underestimate how popular things like Psychoanalysis and Zizek are
over there.

~~~
edko
Borges may have been a conservative, but it never shows in his writing. I
would not call him right-wing at all, but conservative. He was a man of the
early-mid-20th century. Who knows if his views today would be the same.
Society in general is more progressive now than during his lifetime. A reason
not to call Borges right-wing is his strong opposition to the Mussolini-
admirer colonel who was one of the prominent members of the coup of '43, later
president, and later a guest of Franco. For being against this fascist, Borges
was fired from his position as director of the National Library, and relegated
to being an inspector of fowl and cage animals in municipal markets.

------
dyadic
Walking Avenida Corrientes is fascinating and beautiful, it's all just books,
pizza and theatre. And all three are amazing.

~~~
hobarrera
That's quite right, but those bookstores aren't there just for the locals. The
huge economical difference makes buying books here stupidly cheap for
europeans, so a lot of sales are actually done by tourists.

That's not to say us locals don't read though, plenty of buyers are Argentines
too.

------
Daishiman
It should say "Buenos Aires". The rest of Argentina much fewer bookstores.

By far the best country to browse fiction, classical and humanities
literature. Not so much for technical reading.

~~~
petecox
Maybe not in the same quantity but from personal experience Rosario, Mendoza
and Córdoba are decent sized cities with a book-reading student population.

I visited several nice bookstores across the river in Montevideo and Punta del
Este too! :)

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snogglethorpe
Here's the actual list:
[http://www.worldcitiescultureforum.com/indicators/number-
boo...](http://www.worldcitiescultureforum.com/indicators/number-
bookshops-100000-population)

The Guardian article seems a bit exaggerated, e.g. (comparing Buenos Aires
with 25 bookshops per 100,000 population): _" only Hong Kong comes close, with
22 bookshops per 100,000, followed by Madrid in a distant third with just 16
and compared to a mere 10 bookshops for every 100,000 for London"_

Buenos Aires sounds awesome, but a factor of two isn't really all that
significant. There are all sorts of random factors that can perturb such
things up or down a bit, and given all those, 10 and 25 are pretty close. I'd
lump London and Buenos Aires firmly in the same category (along with the other
cities from the top end of the list) as "cities with a lot of bookshops for
their size."

Now, once you get to those places with a single small bookshop for an entire
city... well... that's a bit worrying...

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abecedarius
Curious -- I remember only one or two bookshops, and for a couple weeks I
stayed right off the Avenida Corrientes they mention. Clearly I visited the
wrong neighborhoods. :( Would love to've seen that theater-of-books.

I saw way more bookstores in Barcelona -- like a U.S. college town pre-
internet.

~~~
wslh
Weird, that area is full of bookshops.

~~~
abecedarius
Near the Abasto?

~~~
wslh
No, near Callao.

~~~
abecedarius
Well, something to look forward to on a return. Thanks.

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abc_lisper
Screw you guys! I'm going to Argentina ;)

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sj0000
I would like to see that bookstore toured on Periscope.

