Every season is book season, but autumn in particular is the most ideal for us. Preferably when sitting by the window, the rain is falling and a candle is burning next to us.
Stella’s picks
My favourite Bookstore
The most impressive bookstore I’ve ever been to, is definitely Livraria Lello in Porto.
Many say that this is the most beautiful bookstore in the world and for a good reason.
Built in 1906 by the engineer Francisco Xavier Esteves, the Livraria Lello building is packed with unique architectural details. It is one of the most emblematic examples of the neo-Gothic style in the city of Porto and in Portugal in general. The interior is filled with elaborately carved arches and an imposing ceiling, while the walls and columns rising from the ground floor, with their Art Deco touches, leave you breathless.
But after you are done admiring the exquisite building, it is time to do what you went there for, find books. Their selection is phenomenal and they also carry a big selection of special editions that you can only find there.
To discourage visitors from only taking photos and leaving, an entrance ticket is required. The value of the ticket is deducted from your total when you make a purchase. (tip: book your entrance ticket in advance. Extra tip: visit before they close for the day, it is less crowded)
Fun fact: The iconic staircase was originally brown and only in 1993 did it take on the colour for which it is today known. At that time, there was ongoing restoration work and the staircase was, due to the constructor's mistake, painted crimson. Before the mistake was undone, the sculptor Master José Rodrigues saw the staircase and was delighted with the new colour, which has remained ever since.
My favourite books
#1 “Blanche ou l’Oubli” by Louis Aragon
Blanche ou l'Oubli is a novel, in which the narrator, Geoffroy Gaiffier, through the fictional character of Marie Noire, seeks to understand the reasons for his breakup with his wife Blanche thirty years earlier. The novel unfolds as a reminiscence of those thirty years, intertwining different temporal planes: past, present, memory, forgetfulness, as well as the themes of white and black, along with the shifting narrative perspectives and enunciation instances, allegorical autobiography, and history.
Blanche embodies the woman loved in the past, symbolized through the allegory of the blank page and forgetfulness, by an author tormented by his solitude. He confronts his writing in order to rediscover, through black ink and the representation of the character named Marie-Noire, the essence of a present shaped by memories he seems stubbornly unwilling to forget.
#2 “Hopscotch” by Julio Cortázar
Hopscotch is written in an episodic, snapshot manner. The novel has 155 chapters, the last 99 designated as "expendable". Some of these "expendable" chapters fill in gaps that occur in the main storyline, while others add information about the characters or record the aesthetic or literary speculations of a writer named Morelli who makes a brief appearance in the narrative. Some of the "expendable" chapters at first seem like random musings, but upon closer inspection solve questions that arise during the reading of the first two parts of the book.
An author's note suggests that the book would best be read in one of two possible ways: either progressively from chapters 1 to 56, with all subsequent "expendable chapters" being excluded, or by "hopscotching" through the entire set of 155 chapters according to a "Table of Instructions" designated by the author. Chapter 55 is left out all together in this second method, and the book would end with a recursive loop, as the reader is potentially left to "hopscotch" back and forth between chapters 58 and 131 infinitely.
#3 “The Lake” by Yasunari Kawabata
The Lake alternates between the now middle-aged Momoi and recurring memories of a lake from his hometown, and his interactions with a number of women, beginning with a relative and the uncomfortable circumstances of a death in his family. The novel then explores his connection to a woman who loses a purse full of several years' worth of money earned as a lover to an older man as well as a relationship with a student, Hisako, when Momoi is a teacher, a relationship that begins with a somewhat odd-request for a good cure for a foot condition Momoi suffers from and then examines the circumstances of Hisako's family, who are well-off in the immediate post-war era. Finally, the now middle-aged Momoi follows a young girl during a summer period leading up to a festival and crosses paths with a woman closer to his age.
Alexandra’s picks
My favourite Bookstore
Imagine walking into a room where the ceiling is this deep midnight blue, hand-painted with gold constellations and planets, inspired by Italian Renaissance frescoes, a time when science and poetry were one. It’s on the second floor of Albertine, a bookstore in Manhattan’s Upper East Side; and no surprise given my current NYC obsession, it’s my favourite one.
The whole space feels like a lucid dream. Zodiac symbols twinkle overhead while lamps with enormous amber silk shades hang suspended over tables strewn with hundreds of books. The bookshelves, painted in céladon and trimmed with decorative argentine accents, are divided by narrow wooden panels with sconces.
Honestly, as stunning as that space is (and trust me, it’s seriously stunning), the real star of the show is the vast collection of whatever-genre-you-want books. Among the store’s fourteen thousand volumes, you’ll uncover hard-to-find French titles in English translation.
Down below, astrophysics cozies up to French literature. Duras is deep in dialogue with Godard while writing the screenplay for Hiroshima Mon Amour, Patti Smith is lost in her thoughts, Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye is quietly watching you, and Modiano’s mysteries linger next to the Méditations of Descartes (the 1650 edition). I could keep going with more stories like these, but I’m sleepy and it’s nearly 1am, right now.
And here’s where it gets even better. The Albertine is housed inside the former Payne Whitney mansion, this stunning Italian Renaissance building designed by Stanford White — who, by the way, never got to see it finished. The French government bought it in 1952, and Jacques Grange redesigned the interiors in 2014. It’s actually New York’s only French bookshop now. And seriously, how often do you find yourself walking through a marble-columned rotunda, past a statue that might be Michelangelo’s, a Matisse dove painting, and an 18th-century Venetian mirror, just to get to a bookshop?
My favourite books
#1 “Les Chants de Maldoror” by Le Comte de Lautréamont
Les Chants de Maldoror is this incredibly dark and twisted tale featuring an unapologetically evil protagonist. It’s packed with scenes of violence, perversion, blasphemy, and all kinds of hallucinations and delusions. It’s got this reputation as one of the earliest and most mind-bending examples of Surrealist writing. It’s a long, narrative prose poem that glorifies the principle of Evil with a passion that feels almost decent and sacred.
There’s a quirky little story I have with this book. I picked it up on the recommendation of my friends Valisia and Stella, but then work-life got in the way and I didn’t get around to reading it for months. Finally, when I did find the time and started reading it, I happened to watch Godard’s film Week-end. In the final twenty minutes, when the couple is hanging out at this seaside spot run by cannibalistic hippie revolutionaries, I heard something that struck a chord with me. It was this extended reading about the ocean’s power from Les Chants de Maldoror, with a drumbeat backdrop. I was both amused and a bit freaked out to see that quote pop up right there, right at that moment. It’s like life’s little way of playing games with you.
#2 “Ten Little Indians” by Agatha Christie
A little thing about me: I’m absolutely obsessed with Agatha Christie. While I adore all her novels, this one is definitely my favourite; even though Poirot doesn’t make an appearance! It’s so gripping that I finished it in just one day; I simply couldn’t put it down until I’d read every last word. I won’t spoil anything about the plot, so just trust me, grab a copy and dive in!
#3 “The Piano Teacher” by Elfriede Jelinek
Another beloved book of mine that was also adapted into a movie starring my forever favourite Isabelle Huppert is The Piano Teacher, the most renowned novel by Elfriede Jelinek, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004. It offers a shocking, searing, and poignant portrait of a woman caught between a repressive society and her own darkest desires.
According to goodreads “Erika Kohut is a piano teacher at the prestigious and formal Vienna Conservatory, who still lives with her domineering and possessive mother. Her life appears to be a seamless tissue of boredom, but Erika, a quiet thirty-eight-year-old, secretly visits Turkish peep shows at night to watch live sex shows and sadomasochistic films. Meanwhile, a handsome, self-absorbed, seventeen-year-old student has become enamored with Erika and sets out to seduce her. She resists him at first, but then the dark passions roiling under the piano teacher's subdued exterior explode in a release of sexual perversity, suppressed violence, and human degradation.”
Valisia’s picks
My favourite bookstore
Librairie Jousseaume is an ancient bookstore in what is considered one of Paris' loveliest covered passageways, Galerie Vivienne. Galerie Vivienne was inaugurated in 1826 and with its neoclassical decor, mosaic floor and cupola it quickly became Paris' loveliest covered passageway.
When the passageway first opened, the bookstore was one of the original tenants. The name of the initial store was Librairie Petit-Siroux and you can still see this original name above the store's window. Librairie Jousseaume is in fact made up of two shops which face each other at the point where the covered passage changes direction. The store stocks thousands of used books, antique and more modern. It is where you will just as easily find a first work with its original cover or a more recent edition of a well-known poetry book.
The smaller of the two stores feels like an elderly gentleman's study with shelves brimming with books, worn ancient furniture, a glowing chandelier and the scent of wood and old books. There is even a narrow spiral wooden staircase that leads to the mezzanine which overflows with an impressive collection of paperbacks.
My favourite books
#1 “The Monk” by Matthew Lewis
The Monk is a prime example of the type of Gothic literature that specializes in horror. The story revolves around a devoted monk, Ambrosio, who is tempted to break his sacred vows when a young man, Rosario, reveals that he is a woman, also known as "Matilda," and comes to the monastery and disguises himself as a nun to become closer to him. Caught between two strong plotlines—one being a struggle between sexual desire and religious integrity—Ambrosio soon succumbs to the temptations he has sought his entire life to shun.
#2 “The Devil’s Elixirs” by E.T.A. Hoffmann
Funnily enough, The Devil's Elixirs’s basic idea for the story was adopted from Matthew Gregory Lewis's novel The Monk, which is itself mentioned in the text.
The Devil's Elixirs is predominantly a first-person narrative related by the Capuchin friar Medardus. Medardus cannot resist the devil's elixir, which has been entrusted to him and which awakens in him sensual desires. After being sent from his cloister to Rome, he finds a Count, disguised as a friar as a means of seeing his lover, and pushes him (whether intentionally or not is ambiguous) from a "Teufelssitz" ("devil's perch"). Unbeknownst to all involved, the Count is Medardus's half-brother and the Count's lover is his half-sister. The Count becomes his lunatic doppelgänger and crosses his path multiple times after Medardus abandons his ecclesiastical position, drifting throughout the world.
The story centers on his love for a young princess, Aurelie. After murdering her stepmother (the above-mentioned half-sister) and brother, Medardus flees to a city. After his devilish connection is found out by an old painter, Medardus flees the city with the help of a "foolish" hair dresser with two personalities, who serves as a foil to the destructive dual identity of Medardus, gaily living as both Peter Schoenfeld and Pietro Belcampo. He arrives at a prince's court, soon followed by Aurelie. She recognizes the friar as her brother's murderer and Medardus is thrown in jail. He is released only after the doppelgänger appears and is taken as the murderer.
#3 “Our Lady of the Flowers” by Jean Genet
Our Lady of the Flowers (Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs) is a free-flowing, poetic, largely autobiographical novel of a man's journey through the Parisian underworld. The characters are drawn after their real-life counterparts, who are mostly homosexuals living on the fringes of society.
The narrator tells us that the stories he is telling are mainly to amuse himself whilst he passes his sentence in prison – and the highly erotic, often explicitly sexual, stories are spun to assist his masturbation. Jean-Paul Sartre called it "the epic of masturbation".
Divine lives in an attic room overlooking Montmartre cemetery, which she shares with various lovers, the most important of whom is a pimp called Darling Daintyfoot ("Mignon-les-Petits-Pieds" in French). One day Darling brings home a young hoodlum and murderer, dubbed Our Lady of the Flowers. Our Lady is eventually arrested and tried, and executed. Death and ecstasy accompany the acts of every character, as Genet performs a transvaluation of all values, making betrayal the highest moral value, murder an act of virtue and sexual appeal.
Happy reading from us!
Bisous bisous x