For all of you who are ready to throw in the towel and say out with the book, in with the Kindle, take a look at this. Apart from everything that books themselves have to offer — great smell, opportunities to scribble in the margins, cool points on subway cars — they have one key thing to recommend them over those electronic readers: They're sold in bookstores.
And I'm not talking about your average, sterile bookstore that you venture into twice a school year to pick up your dreaded coursebooks. I'm talking about the type of bookstore you would plan vacations around, the kind that you'd walk into and probably never want to leave. Flavorwire has dug up 10 such spots around the globe, from New York City to Detroit to Holland, and each one is awe-inspiring in its own right.
A side of us knows, on a certain level, that books are impractical when faced with their technological counterparts. They're harder to transport, easy to ruin and they take up space. But stepping into one of these bookstores (even virtually, through the fantastic photos on the site), reminds you that books' ability to take up space and look beautiful and fascinating is one of their main functions. The more magical they look, the more magical your reading experience will be — especially if it comes from one of these 10 places.
