I wrote this post especially for the Introduce Your City contest, this month's theme: "Books and your City".
I had a few ideas about what would be best to show, but in the end I chose the simplest idea. It's a common, everyday story of books and readers. You don't have to wait for a holiday date or a special event to see what I'm about to tell you about. You can come to this bookstore any day and see something very similar.
So, I decided on a theme and went to a big bookstore located on Nevsky Prospect. Nevsky Prospect is the central street of our city, and the store I chose to visit is the central chain bookstore. It's probably the biggest chain store, books take up all three floors of the old building. There are chairs and comfortable sofas by the windows, and these places for reading are rarely free.
It used to be, in my childhood days, that no one would let you take a book off the shelf in the store and read it immediately. You could only ask the vendor for the right edition and pay money if the product was in stock. Now everything has changed. Bookshops have become like clubs.
On the second floor of the store is a small stage. Meetings with writers, presentations of new books and other book events are held there. I caught a book club meeting. The discussion of the Dostoevsky novel was in full swing. If any of the participants forgot details of the plot, they could take a book from the nearest shelf to check everything out.
Unfortunately, I didn't get to go into the cafe and have a cup of coffee, there was renovation going on in that part of the room. You can see the navigation arrows pointing in the direction of the cafeteria, but you can't follow them yet.
In addition to books, the store sells stationery - true, it's a related trade, and notebooks and pencils are hidden in the farthest room. All the rest of the space is taken up by books: all kinds of topics, all kinds of decorations, for all tastes, for all tasks.
Details about the contest and rules of participation can be found here:
@beeber/iyc-community-contest-no-5
Unfortunately, I waited until the last day to submit and it's too late to call my friends to participate... but I'll still take this opportunity to mention my friends @may2015 and @alechi - maybe they'll be interested in next month's theme?
Bonus photo. A rainy day in the store yard:
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| Smartphone | Google Pixel 3a |
| Location | Saint Petersburg, Russia |