Books in Mexico City
Mexico City Bookstore (photo LA Times)
One of the first stories we did on eldefe.com was on the bookstores at Donceles in Mexico City’s Centro Historico.
So it is nice that the LA Times can pick up something besides the killings and drug war that infect so much news in the US. Their travel article on Calle Donceles only bolsters the claim that the city is a first rate stop for literary lovers and historical buffs.
Besides providing the publishing world with content, the art, photography and history books on sale within Donceles’ used-book stores serve as a better introduction to Mexican culture than any local museum.
You don’t have to read Spanish to love these bookstores. There is an incredible range of old, odd books in English (as well as in French, German and Italian) scattered throughout the shelves. In Bibliofilia, a Donceles bookstore that specializes in rare, antique and out-of-print books, a 1960s Manual for Refrigeration Mechanics, a first edition of T.S. Eliot’s “The Cocktail Party” and the 1866 “History of the United States” in four volumes illustrated with steel engravings are for sale at about a third the price of what they could fetch north of the border.
That’s just if you were wondering what to do in Mexico City. Mexican people always modestly say that no one reads in Mexico – and in some ways it’s probably true, but hey, that just leaves more books for the rest of us.
