Recommended to you by the librarians of the Société de Lecture
The Paris Bookseller, Kerri Maher, 2022 (LHC 1022)
American booklover Sylvia Beach opened her English Bookshop in Paris in 1919. Paris was, after the Great War, the city of freedom and optimism, attracting many American writers escaping “the censorious forces at work in America”. Sylvia rapidly fell in love with Adrienne Monnier, a French editor and bookseller in the Latin Quarter. Her Shakespeare and Company went in tandem together with Monnier’s store. They animated an important French and English intellectual hub – the Odeon circle – between the two Wars. Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, among others, were regulars, and friends. Even Gertrude Stein came to take her lending card, but retrieved it due to her dislike of James Joyce. Sylvia’s unique, enormous venture in editing was her publication in France of James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922, which had been banned in the United States. Maher dramatically tells the story of Sylvia’s friendship and fight for Joyce and his controversial, revolutionary book, which Sylvia considered “the most inescapable book of our time”. She beautifully turns this real story into an enlivening, appealing novel. Shakespeare and Company still exists, not far from Sylvia’s original store. Renamed by its American owner, George Whitman, in homage to Sylvia – on Shakespeare’s four hundredth birthday – it is currently owned by Whitman’s daughter… named Sylvia.
RECENT PURCHASES
BORROWING
- Online catalogue
- Open shelf access
- Borrow books during Société de Lecture opening hours
- Limit of 8 books per person at one time
- Loan period: 15 days (new books) or 1 month (general collection).
- Extensions can be requested by email at bibliotheque@societe-de-lecture.ch or by phone : 022 310 67 46
- Reserve books: at the loan desk, by email, by phone or through the online catalogue
- Books sent by post on request (at the member’s expense)
Connecting readers with the library:
the Reading Committee
The Société de Lecture is exceptional in many ways, including how it selects new books – a responsibility that, for many decades, has been entrusted to a Reading Committee of 12 to 15 members of the Société. Each committee member reads three to five books per month, and writes short critical reviews of each one, before collectively deciding which ones to purchase for the library. Around 30 of these reviews are published in each issue of our monthly magazine, Plume au Vent. This group of dedicated volunteers find time in their busy schedules to perform this demanding task, with equal parts enthusiasm and modesty.
Reading Committee members:
Christian Buenzod (Chairman), Bruno Desgardins, Pascale Dhombres, Jacques-Simon Eggly, Catherine Fauchier-Magnan, Fadiah Haller-Assaad, Tatiana Hervieu-Causse, Hélène Leibkutsch, Sharon Mordasini, Soussan Raadi-Djalili, Jean-Bernard Rondeau, Petr Shmatenko, Dominique Thouvenin and our librarians Maxime Canals, Christiane Bernadac and Marie Merminod