What makes a book town?
It can’t be too big—not a city, but a
genuine town, usually in a rural setting. It has to have bookshops—not
one or two, but a real concentration, where a bibliophile might spend
hours, even days, browsing. Usually a book town begins with a couple of
secondhand bookstores and later grows to offer new books, too.
But mostly, they have a lot of books for sale.
Hobart, New York,
is a perfect example of how having one bookstore in a small town is
nice, but having many bookstores together makes a place special—a
destination. Since the 1970s, book towns like it have been springing up
all over the world. There are now dozens of them, from Australia and
Finland to India and South Korea.
In the forthcoming Book Towns, journalist Alex Johnson catalogues these most charming of tourist destinations. He spoke to Atlas Obscura about the pleasures of out-of-the-way places defined by their books.
More at Atlas Obscura
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