You might remember I mentioned this basilica in Como before – San Fidele. It was started in the 6th Century and in its heyday in the 11th, when the cathedral was started a couple of streets away, to eventually dwarf it. 
And on the Piazza of San Fidele there were these very old buildings jutting out onto the square, their wooden beams cut a mere 1,200 years before…
So then I found that one of them was a bookstore. A working bookstore. With books.
Happily the beams have been reinforced with steel. (Believe me, if you could have seen the state of some of those beams, you’d be glad too…deathwatch beetles or something similar had had a medieval feast for several hundred years.) And in the fantasy section, I found at least one Australian author. Yep, Trudi Canavan is for sale in a medieval bookstore.
Ok, to be strictly accurate, the place – started in the 6th century was actually the baptistry of the basilica, not a bookstore, way back when. At least, that’s what I think it said on the blurb in the store. Unfortunately, it was all in Italian…
Nonetheless, I wanna be sold in a shop as delightful as this one!
I love bookshops ^.^
wish there was an easy way to decide which books to buy tho, lol.
There is an easy way, just buy them all LOL.
Bookshops are fascinating always, but what a setting. When you live in modern countries like Canada, the States, Australia, et al, to see these old buildings is such a treat.
Gotta love those 1200 year old beams! I think I need to visit Como and do some research, heh.
That’s a really nice photo of you in the book shop – though I could wish it was one of your own books you were holding. Then again, maybe your books sold out more quickly than Trudi’s. 🙂
Nah, they didn’t have much of an English collection at all, and I am not translated into Italian.
Not yet… 🙂
jo – I wish 🙂
Amazing, your are translated into Russian which is surely a more obscure language than Italian?
Ah, but there are far more Russian speakers than Italian speakers…
Actually Russian speaking nations have a long history of sf/f literature; after all, how better to criticise an authoritarian govt than through sf/f fiction?
Not something I would have thought of Glenda. I have often wondered with various novels I have read if there was a kernel of truth in the stories. Authors who daren’t tell the real truth, but skate on thin ice to tell it fictionally.