By all accounts there are some terrific English bookshops in Rome. We happened upon the Otherwise Bookshop at a timely moment since the skies were about to open up and drench us. BTW, there is an Italian bookshop opposite, should you be in the company of somebody who would appreciate that. I was.
Lovely staff and a truly fantastic carefully curated collection on the shelves. To survive in the internet age as a small book business, this is absolutely vital. I was impressed at how many books I would happily have walked out with – I limited it to four, but I wonder if I should go back tomorrow for another shot.
Their hours are long, apparently they close around midnight, which is another treat for book-browsing types. The last time I can recall being in a bookshop that kept such hours was the Third World Bookshop in Adelaide in the early eighties.
I now have 3 more Ferrantes to read and a John Berger which has been on my shopping list for a while.
I love their idea of an author’s bookshelf. The selection up at the moment is by Francesco Pacifico and it contains a few books I hadn’t heard of but have put on my maybe should virtual shelf. Here is his full list.
1. Donald Antrim – The Hundred Brothers
2. Jamie Bartlett – The Dark Net
3. Saul Bellow – Herzog
4. Lucia Berlin – A Manual for Cleaning Women
5. Truman Capote – Breakfast at Tiffany’s
6. Lydia Davis– Can’t and Won’t
7. Philip Dick – Ubik
8. Philip Dick – The Man in the High Castle
9. Arthur Conan Dolye – A Study in Scarlet
10. George Eliot – Middlemarch
11. William Faulkner – As I Lay Dying
12. Allen Ginsberg – Howl
13. Henry James – Washington Square
14. James Joyce – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
15. The Raven – POP-UP
16. H.P. Lovecraft – The Call of the Cthulhu
17. Bernard Malamud – The Assistant
18. Vladimir Nabokov – Pale Fire
19. Flannery O’Connor – Wise Blood
20. Thomas Pynchon – Inherent Vice
21. Thomas Pynchon – Vineland
22. Claudia Rankine – Citizen
23. Philip Roth – The Human Stain
24. Alex Ross – The Rest is Noise
25. George Saunders – Lincoln in the Bardo
26. Frederick Seidel – The Comos Trilogy
27. Dana Spiotta – Innocents and Others
28. John Jeremiah Sullivan – Pulphead
29. Adam Thirlwell – Lurid & Cute
30. Virginia Woolf – The Waves
What
Otherwise Bookshop
Where
Via del Governo Vecchio, 80
Open every day
mon-thu 10:30 – 23:30
fri 10:30 – 0:00
sat 10 – 1 am
sun 10 – 23:30
7, 8, 16, 19, 30 approved…
“What is Real?” by Adam Becker. Top-notch.
What, no Calvino? Otherwise a good list. If you’re ever traveling in the US— I know it’s a tad bit tacky these days & certainly a less romantic destination, but you must visit Powell’s City of Books on Portland, OR. They’re open to 2300 every day and feature many lists and readings. http://www.powells.com/
Perhaps more interestingly, no Italians mentioned.I am guessing his list is deliberately non-translated books. That”s me on my tablet, I am not anonymous, I am a human being.