One of the bookshops in the Slovak chain of bookstores and online bookseller Martinus.sk has made it into a list of the 75 greatest bookstores worldwide. This shop, located in the Cubicon shopping centre in Bratislava, joins such iconic bookshops as Shakespeare and Company in Paris which was visited by Ernest Hemingway and the grandiose Livraria Lello in Porto.
Bob Eckstein, the author and illustrator of Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores also works for The New Yorker. He made his selection of bookshops by choosing paradises for book lovers according to his own criteria and his book is being released this month, Martinus.sk wrote in its press release.
“As far as choosing the bookstores, my selections were based on recommendations, word of mouth, social history, and contributions to the locale,” Eckstein writes in the book. “And of course, there had to be a good story from someone I knew or met that was a reliable source. I started with a list of 150 bookstores and eventually narrowed that down to 75. I wasn’t able to include all the greatest bookshops, but I do know every bookshop in this book is great.”
In the book, two pages are dedicated to a brief description of each of the bookstores and includes illustrations of the store’s interior or exterior with added interesting information linked with the space.