The Red Wheelbarrow is an English-language bookshop in the Marais, named for the William Carlos Williams poem in the manner that suggests its editorial sympathies. The selection is curated with particular attention to literary fiction and poetry alongside a strong essay and cultural criticism section — the kind of shop that stocks books because the people who work there have read them, rather than because a distributor has flagged them as promotable. The Marais location gives it a consistent international clientele that keeps the inventory turning without requiring it to stock bestsellers as a commercial necessity. The room is small — a single space with shelves on every available surface — which gives browsing the quality of a private library search: you will find something you did not know you were looking for, which is the correct measure of a bookshop of this type.
Le Marais, Paris, France