Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores by Bob Eckstein

True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and Book Lovers 

3 stars
language
r-2

Meh.

I just.... didn't love it. I really wanted to. I expected to. But.... meh.


For one, the cover opens one way, but then the pages turn perpendicular to it (if that makes any sense..... you hold the book with the cover binding at the top, but the pages are bound on the right, unconnected to the front cover....) so it's awkward to hold.

The physical logistics of the book were frustrating-- in addition to the tricky cover, the actual binding (of the pages) felt really flimsy, so I was constantly worrying about damaging the library's clearly very new book.

Also, maybe it's my crappy eyes, but some of the quotes/stories on the paintings were hard to read because of color choices and such.

The anecdotes were amusing, but some really needed more context and there was at least one that made no sense at all.  Like really just none.

I wanted more about some bookstores and less about others....

Overall, I don't know.  It just didn't work for me.  Maybe as a book to jut flip idly through but to read cover to cover... meh.

(Though I did enjoy the forward by Garrison Keillor.)