And Melbourne officially has the best in the world! “Forget your Foyles of London or that Barnes & Noble on New York’s Union Square,” reports the Weekly Review. “The best bookstore in the world sits on Lygon Street, Carlton.”
Its name is Readings, and it was officially crowned International Bookstore of the Year for “its community outreach, support of Australian authors and its help for non-profit organisations working on literacy initiatives”.
Call us old-fashioned, says Matt Holden in The Age, “but Melbourne still loves a bricks-and-mortar bookshop.” There’s something about Melbourne, agrees Joel Becker, CEO of the Australian Booksellers Association -- “a strong sense of high streets as places to shop at community-based businesses." Melbourne’s love affair with books has a long history. In 1922, the Hill of Content Bookshop opened at the top end of Bourke Street, near another Melbourne institution, The Paperback Bookshop, in what was known as the seediest part of town. How times have changed.
And here, That’s Melbourne lists five city bookstores to browse.