Category: books

  • Page One Bookstore 叶一堂, Beijing

    Page One Bookstore 叶一堂, Beijing

    This post is based on one of two very different bookstores in Beijing which I(Chris) visited before the pandemic. First, Page One is a bookstore chain and publisher founded in Singapore in 1983 by Mark Tan (陈家强), which has retail shops built in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Thailand, and in China (since the…

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  • Wangfujing Bookstore 王府井书店, Beijing

    Wangfujing Bookstore 王府井书店, Beijing

    The following two posts are about two very different bookstores in Beijing, both visited before the pandemic. The first is Wanfujing Bookstore, situated at the beginning of Wangfujing Dajie (王府井大街), in Dongcheng district 東城區 of central Beijing. I (Chris) was on a business trip and I dragged a very patient colleague along to this bookstore. …

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  • Maison Assouline, London

    Maison Assouline, London

    Another post on bookstores. Assouline is a publisher of books that serve as luxury lifestyle accessories. They are based in New York but the flagship store is in London, opened in 2014.  We were in London during Christmas 2018. The store is situated between two other book-lovers destinations – Hatchards and Waterstones – mainstream bookstores.…

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  • Amazon Books, Walnut Creek

    Amazon Books, Walnut Creek

    We have posted on this blog many pictures of bookstores, and lamented the fact that brick-and-mortar bookstores are becoming rare and possibly extinct in certain cities. In the US, this trend is driven largely by the advent of e-books sold online. Amazon started their global online business with this retail concept. By chance, we came…

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  • “Their Morocco” by Mehdi de Graincourt

    “Their Morocco” by Mehdi de Graincourt

    This is our last post on Morocco which we visited in January/February 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic hit Europe and Africa. The tourism industry suffered enormously worldwide.  We hope the lodgings and services we had enjoyed can bounce back quickly in 2021. We close this series with a softback coffee-table book I picked up…

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  • The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

    The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

    Two weeks of vacation was a good chunk of time for me (Chris) to start and perhaps finish a book. For this trip to Morocco, my selection was this classic – The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles, published in 1949. I knew about this book first from the soundtrack for the 1990 movie made by…

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