Some of us treat book-reading and book-buying as two completely separate hobbies – and if you’re looking for a cute spot to browse for a new book to add to your growing ‘to-read’ pile, have we got the list for you.
Sustainable retailer Awesome Books has compiled a list of the most ‘gram-worthy bookstores on the planet, each well worthy of a slide on your story, by analysing the total number of posts tagged with the shop’s name as a hashtag.
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Perched on the top shelf is The Last Bookstore, a quirky spot in Los Angeles that features a famous ‘book portal’ (a tunnel made of books) and sells not only new and second-hand books and records but also has lots of local art on its walls. It has an impressive 113,000 hashtag mentions on Instagram, which means it sits comfortably in first place.
‘The Last Bookstore perfectly blends art installation with bookshop,’ said founder of Awesome Books Taskeen Ahmed, ‘Its book tunnel and floating book displays were practically designed for the Instagram era, though they were created well before social media became so dominant.’
Second up is Livraria Lello, that famous Porto bookshop which features ornate lamps, intricate wood staircases and a pretty stain-glassed ceiling. This one has a solid 97,900 tags on Instagram, only slightly ahead of the third-place shop, Shakespeare and Company in Paris, which has 96,500.
These are the world’s 10 most photogenic bookshops
- The Last Bookstore, Los Angeles
- Livraria Lello, Porto
- Shakespeare and Company, Paris
- BookPeople, Texas
- Powell’s Books, Oregon
- Libreria Acqua Alta, Venice
- National Book Store, Metro Manila
- Strand Book Store, New York
- Daunt Books, London
- Books Actually, Singapore
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