My husband’s been reading an article in Monocle Magazine about the top global cities and he’s been telling me about all sorts of cool things about Copenhagen. We’ll be going there for vacation this year so needless to say we’re excited. One of the items that interested me the most about this article was that they listed how many bookstores are to be found in each of these 25 cities.

For example: Tokyo has 1,051, Paris has 677, Hamburg has 354, Copenhagen has 83 and San Francisco has more than 50. We are planning to stop in Hamburg on our way to Copenhagen so I think that was a good call.

Of course this made me think of the bookstores in our city and while we do have quite a few our number certainly falls below some of the cities mentioned in the article.

Still here are Austin’s bookstores:
BookPeople – Great indie bookstore
BookWoman – Fabulous feminist bookstore
Farewell Books – Used to be Domy Books which was a great place to find zines and art/design books.
South Congress Books – Used bookstore specializing in art, photography, fiction, music, and popular culture.
Blue Awning Books – Another indie used bookstore which I haven’t explored yet.
Half Price Books – There are four and a new one is opening at the end of month.
Barnes & Noble – Only four but luckily one is close to my home.
Recycled Reads – Austin Public Library’s used bookstore
Comic Bookstores – There are several around town but I’ve never been in them so can’t give you the nitty gritty.

Of course I still miss Borders and I’ve seen a couple of other indie bookstores close but at least I do have a good variety of stores to choose from. How about you? Do you have quite a few bookstores to choose from in  your city? Do you have some indie bookstores?

We went to the Austin Book Workers’ Book Arts Fair today and although we didn’t stay for very long I enjoyed looking at some of the activities that were going on like paper marbling and rubber stamping. I saw some cool book sculptures:

Actually, I found out that Recycled Reads hosts an Upcycle This workshop every first Thursday of the month. They take old books and give them a new life through sculptures, jewelry, etc. I have to go check that out one day.

But back to the book fair… There were books on display to showcase various bookbinding techniques, like stab binding, pamphlet stitch, etc. And, they also had a lot of books on bookbinding. I saw some titles I wouldn’t mind having for my own.

And, they also had someone showing how a printing press works. I still want to learn to do this one day!

I’ve missed attending the Book Workers’ meetings but unfortunately I just haven’t been able to make time for them. Maybe in the Fall. Anyway, I’m just so excited that this group exists to promote the love of bookmaking and that events like these take place. Hurrah for book arts!