Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Booktowns

Hay-on-Wye, Wales is probably the world's best-known "booktown," but Stars and Stripes' Kevin Dougherty profiles a few others in a recent story. Bredevoort in The Netherlands and Redu, Belgium get most of the ink in Dougherty's piece, but that's alright - they sound fascinating. Bredevoort is home to less than 2,000 people, "but, incredibly, there are roughly 200,000 tomes on the market in ... two dozen bookstores." In Redu, the human population's just 450, but there are 22 bookshops.

These all sound like places where someone like me could get in real trouble ...

[h/t Shelf:Life]