On Buenos Aires and its bookshops — the 24-hour librería, the neighbourhood bookshop, and what they say about a city that takes reading seriously
Buenos Aires has more bookshops per capita than any other city in the world. This is a fact cited frequently and verified rarely, but the feeling of it — the density of the Corrientes avenue bookshop corridor, the neighbourhood librería that is still open at eleven at night — is consistent with the claim.
Buenos Aires has more bookshops per capita than any other city in the world. This is a fact cited frequently and verified rarely, but the feeling of it — the density of the Corrientes avenue bookshop corridor, the neighbourhood librería that is still open at eleven at night, the 24-hour bookshop that operates on the logic that someone, at any hour, will want a book — is entirely consistent with the claim.
El Ateneo Grand Splendid is the most visible argument: a 1919 theatre converted to a bookshop with the stage as a café and the original boxes serving as reading alcoves. This is not a gimmick. The conversion was done with architectural respect and the bookshop — three floors of shelves in the former stalls — is serious. The Argentine literature section is the best reason to go, followed by the Latin American fiction section, followed by sitting in the stage café and observing the space.
Avenida Corrientes, running west from the theatre district, has sustained a continuous corridor of bookshops since the 1920s — some new, many second-hand, all operating on the Buenos Aires principle that books are for reading rather than display. The second-hand shops are the more interesting: the depth of Argentine literary history in their shelves, from Borges first editions to photocopied political pamphlets from the 1970s, constitutes a kind of unsorted archive.
The neighbourhood librería is a different proposition. Eterna Cadencia in Palermo Soho has a literary programme — book launches, readings, conversations — that is independent of its bookshop function, which means it has a community rather than a customer base. The café at the back of the shop operates with the correct understanding of its role: coffee is a reason to stay longer, not a reason to come at all.
What makes Buenos Aires a reading city, rather than simply a city with a lot of bookshops, is the attitude toward time. Reading here is not a productivity activity. It is a leisure activity in the serious sense: a thing done for its own quality, not for its utility. The 24-hour bookshop exists because the city acknowledges that the moment when you need a book at three in the morning is as legitimate as any other, and it should be accommodated.