Against Amazon: and Other Essays

(Paperback)

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Description

A history of bookshops, an autobiography of a reader, a travelogue, a love letter-and, most urgently, a manifesto.

Picking up where the widely praised Bookshops: A Reader's History left off, Against Amazon explores the increasing pressures of Amazon and other new technologies on bookshops and libraries.

Collecting the author's essays on these vital social, cultural, and intellectual spaces, as well as his interviews with the writers who love them including Alberto Manguel, Iain Sinclair, Luigi Amara and Han Kang, among others Against Amazon is equal parts a history of books and bookshops, an autobiography of a reader, a travelogue, a love letter and, most urgently, a manifesto against the corrosive pressures of late capitalism.

Reviews

Praise for Against Amazon and Other Essays

This is just the sort of book that bibliophilesto say nothing of bibliomaniacswill enjoy ... A subtle pleasure for lovers of the printed word, even if they order books from the leviathan.Kirkus Reviews

Against Amazon is an optimistic overall take on books, reading and retailing and an attempt to avoid ending up knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.Winnipeg Free Press

Praise for Jorge Carrins Bookshops: A Readers History

The perfect merging of love of travel and literature.Buzzfeed

[Carrins] purpose is to celebrate bookstores. And he does so by wandering the globe in search of those that playor have playeda special role in the intellectual and social lives of their communities. They become Carrins personal mappa mundi.New York Times

Every bookshop is a condensed version of the world, begins Mr. Carrins literary and unabashedly sentimental exploration of bookstores around the globe . . . [Carrion] wanders through volume-laden aisles in Athens, Paris, Bratislava, Budapest, Tangier and Sydney, and invokes many other shops, both open and closed, telling stories about writers, readers and literary circles . . . By the end, you may feel poorly readbut well armed with titles and bookshops to visit on your own.Wall Street Journal

Carrin explores the fine lines between pilgrimage destination, touristy gimmick, and decent bookshop. This is the perfect book for those who feel compelled to visit every bookstore they see.Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Excellent . . . entertaining . . . this quietly intelligent little book speaks volumes.Michael Dirda, Washington Post

Sublimely entrancing . . . brilliant . . . [Carrins] Borgesian bookit can be opened at any point and read forward, or backwards for that matteris not at all sad. To read is to travel in time and space, and to travel from bookshop to bookshop is an ecstatic experience for Carrin, a joy he conveys page after page. Macleans

Author Bio

Jorge Carrins Bookshops: A Readers History, published by Biblioasis in 2017, was universally acclaimed and has appeared in thirteen languages. He is the author of three novels, including Los muertos, which won the 2011 Festival de Chambry Prize for best first novel in Spanish. Carrins journalism appears in the Spanish-language edition of the New York Times and many other newspapers in Europe and the Americas. He lives in Barcelona, where he is the director of the creative writing program at Pompeu Fabra University.

Peter Bush's recent translations include Teresa Solanas The First Prehistoric Serial Killer and Other Stories, his selection of Barcelona Tales, and Quim Monzs Why, Why, Why In press are Josep Plas Salt Water and Juan Francisco de Dios Hernndezs Leonardo Balada: A Transatlantic Gaze; in process, Balzacs The Lily in the Valley and Najat El Hachmis Mother of Milk and Honey. He lives in Oxford, UK.