World's top bookshops

The world's most beautiful bookshop, the Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen in Maastricht, according to The Guardian. Read all about it here. It's essentially a giant modular bookshop frame erected inside a Dominican church. If they had erected the self-same framework inside an aircraft hangar, and stocked it with the same books, it doubtless wouldn't have won. The prize is going to the church, then, even though as part of the permission to use the building, it was stipulated that the shop would not impinge on the church building in any way.

Brussels also got a mention, in the form of the art bookshop Posada. Choosing a shop that sells art as well as art-books might seem like cheating. But not as bad as voting a church Best Bookshop.

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Poll: Most beautiful children's book

 

A Flemish paper is running a poll to find out the "most beautiful children's book of all time".
As well as Dutch and Flemish titles (only to be expected) the list already contains the likes of Charlotte's Web and The Cat in the Hat, Where the Wild Things Are and The Snowman.
I take it their definition of "beautiful" is as wide as can be, since they include not only Sendak and Briggs, but also books like Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which as far as a recall didn't have a lot of beautiful illustrations, if indeed it had any.

So let me throw the question open to readers: What do you think is the most beautiful children's book of all time?

Already noted:
Beatrix Potter (all)
The BFG
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Alice in Wonderland
Le petit prince
Tracy Beaker
Matilda
Narnia
Pippi Longstocking
Guess How Much I Feel Like Throwing Up Love You
Winnie the Pooh

Vote in comments, as often as you like.

Grapes 2.0

"Reading pushes the pain away"

 

"Reading pushes the pain away into a place where it no longer seems important. No matter how ill you are, there's a world inside books which you can enter and explore, and where you focus on something other than your own problems. You get to talk about things that people usually skate over, like ageing or death, and that kind of conversation - with everyone chipping in, so you feel part of something - can be enormously helpful." Others say the same: "I've stopped seeing the doctor since I came here and cut down on my medication"; "being in a group with other women who have what I had, breast cancer, didn't help me, but talking about books has made a huge difference."

The reading cure | Review | Guardian Unlimited Books

Blake Morrison in The Guardian on book groups