From the rejuvenator to the real deal: Paris is the place to go for book lovers disillusioned by the desert offered by Whitcoulls and Paper plus in NZ.
Paris is a city full of boutiques in both the French and English senses and there are lots of independent bookshops; some look like those that used to exist in NZ a long time ago. There are books on almost every subject to be found and it requires a lot of self control not to buy and buy! Well if suitcase weight was not an issue...
Books are advertised on illuminated billboards, something unknown in NZ, and there are TV programmes devoted to new books; in prime time slots in the evenings too; not Saturday mornings as in NZ.
Lots of older books are of course also sold from the green boxes along both sides of the Seine as they have been for many years.
A favourite of the French literary scene which is easy to get hooked by is the bande dessinee or cartoon book which gives illustrators an opportunity to produce pictorial stories with ballon style dialogue boxes; some are designed for adolescents and others for adults, and the style of illustration covers a large range too. Again they´re unknown in NZ except the well known Tintin series.
Apple's iPad is released here on 28 May; will Parisiens swap their paperback books in the parks and on the Metro for a bulky iPad reader? One doubts it.
No comments:
Post a Comment