Stories From the World's Greatest Bookstores

Stacey Lewis, the marketing director for the decades-old, beatnik-infused City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, once received an unforgettable letter from a customer. The patron wanted to inform the staff that following her father’s death, she had surreptitiously placed his ashes in various nooks and crannies throughout the poetry room. “She said it was her father’s favorite place in the world and she was comforted by knowing he was there,” Lewis added.

Lewis’s recollection is one of 75 stories that appear in Bob Eckstein’s illustrated volume, Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores: True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and Book Lovers ($22, Penguin Random House). To compile the book, Eckstein, a cartoonist for The New Yorker, solicited stories of beloved bookstores from friends and acquaintances across the globe. His colorful, impressionistic paintings are overlaid with quirky anecdotes from shop owners or regulars.