Posts Tagged ‘Books’
Another Country
Marian Ryan profiles one of Berlin's most characterful bookshops... In November 2010, one of the world’s best-known travel-guide brands, Lonely Planet, named Berlin’s Another Country among the top ten bookshops in the world. The quirky, thirteen-year-old Kreuzberg institution took its place at number six, alongside legends like Paris’s adored Shakespeare & Company and San Francisco’s iconic City Lights. Not a few jaws dropped among the Berlin literati. “None of the other [...]
Slow-style Xmas shopping guide 2011
Natalie Holmes rounds up a selection of Berlin shops with a local, sustainable, eco and fair trade twist... E.M. Forster once described Christmas as a time when “vulgarity reigns”. Indeed, a century later, cynics are quick to dismiss the festive season as little more than a thinly veiled ploy to ramp up consumerism to ever-giddier heights. Still, for the optimists among us, the act of giving and spirit of goodwill -- however clumsily expressed -- can still be a way to celebrate the [...]
Do You Read Me?!
Carlijn Potma browses Berlin's most comprehensive magazine store... Auguststrasse - East Berlin’s so called ‘art mile’ - doesn't only host a widerange of art galleries. It’s also a great place to hunt for rare books and magazines thanks to No. 28, which houses Do You Read Me?!, a well-known store offering hundreds of interesting magazines and reading material. Graphic designer Mark Kiessling and professional bookseller Jessica Reitz founded the store two and a half years ago [...]
Dialogue Berlin
Wyndham Wallace talks to Sharmaine Lovegrove of Dialogue about the latest chapter in her quest to bring English language literature to Berlin… In 2009, former Londoner Sharmaine Lovegrove set up Dialogue in the back of a Prenzlauer Berg café, seeking to provide not only a source of contemporary English language books – including translations – but also to provide a focus for the city’s English speaking, book loving community. Though other stores existed that sold English language [...]
Cafe Hilde
Book readings, hearty Irish breakfasts and home-made cakes... My first encounter with Café Hilde was on a dark and wet winter night back in January. The streets outside glistened with snow and rain rapped at the windows like a lunatic insect as I sipped wine with friends and listened in hushed silence to a voice from the past. The voice belonged to Orson Welles – to a 1938 radio broadcast of him reading from Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness to be precise. Welles' voice, wrapped [...]
Anna Blume
Where flowers, cakes and poetry mingle harmoniously... Berliners love their bounteous breakfasts as much as their afternoon Kaffee und Kuchen - and any establishment that can offer both is justly venerated. So it is with Anna Blume, a Prenzlauer Berg institution that manages to combine a florist, bakery and cafe with impressive fluidity. Interior designer Thomas Seiffert has made good use of the fact the venue was named after a 1919 Kurt Schwitters poem: lines from the surrealist [...]
Marga Schoeller Bookshop
A charming Charlottenburg bookshop with a great selection of English titles and a warm, old school vibe... Not many bookstores can say they've been in operation for over eight decades, especially in a city as historically turbulent as Berlin - but Marga Schoeller's can. Opened in 1929 by the eponymous Frau Schoeller, the shop originally specialised in European literature and theatre works. Schoeller managed to stay open during the National Socialist years despite refusing to sell Nazi [...]
