Contents

• Author’s Note
• Against Amazon: Seven Arguments ∙ A Manifesto
• I. Because I don’t want to be an accomplice to symbolic expropriation
• II. Because we are all cyborgs, but not robots
• III. Because I reject hypocrisy
• IV. Because I don’t want to be an accomplice to a new empire
• V. Because I don’t want them to spy on me while I am reading
• VI. Because I defend being slow yet quick, and relatively close
• VII. Because I’m not ingenuous
• The Best Bookshops in the World Aren’t the Ones You Think They Are
• Journey to the End of the Light: Walking around London with Iain Sinclair
• I. Home
• II. A Stroll
• III. Taxi
• The World’s Most Important Libraries Aren’t the Ones You Think They Are
• Before and After Borges
• I Dismantle My Library
• I. The First Library
• II. Universities
• III. My Library is falling to pieces but it is still my memory
• The Legendary Bookshops of David B.
• From Little Havana to Miamizuela
• My Bookish Buenos Aires: An interview with Alberto Manguel in the National Library of Argentina
• That Conundrum We Call a Bookshop
• Fictional Libraries
• I. The Common Heritage
• II. The Library of Alonso el Quijano, el Bueno
• III. The Library on the Nautilus
• IV. The Library of Babel
• The Dogs of Capri
• I. The Selfie House
• II. Under the Volcano
• III. The Sea in Miniature
• In Defence of Bookshops
• Bookshops: Second-hand Versus New ∙ A Conversation with Luigi Amara
• Bookshops Are Being Reinvented in Tokyo
• Against Bibliophilia
• Where Does Paper End and Screen Begin? A Journey to Seoul Beset by Questions
• The Future of Libraries
• I. Book Burning
• II. Social Vocation
• III. The Future Is in the Past
• COVID-19 and Bookshops