The Three Literary Capitals of the World?

Travel Blog  •  Eva Holland  •  12.22.08 | 12:00 PM ET

Conde Nast Traveler has chosen Berlin, Dublin and Boston as its three best cities for bookworms. They’re all worthy choices, but still, I have to ask: Was this list originally titled, “Three Best Cities for Bookworms, Not Counting Paris and London”?

How did Berlin, the city of Brecht, beat out the city of Hugo, Sartre and de Beauvoir, Moliere, Stendhal, and 350 years of salon history? (Not to mention all the English-speaking expatriate writers that have gravitated to Paris over the years.) How did Thoreau and his Massachusetts pond outrank Shakespeare, Dickens, Dr. Johnson, George Orwell and the Bloomsbury group?

I know, I know. There’s no fun in the obvious choices. But sometimes those choices are obvious for very, very good reasons.

[Via The Book Bench]

Tags: Charles Dickens, George Orwell, Literature, Europe, England, London, France, Paris, Germany, Berlin, Ireland, Dublin, North America, United States, Massachusetts, Boston, Literary Travel

Eva Holland is co-editor of World Hum. She is a former associate editor at Up Here and Up Here Business magazines, and a contributor to Vela. She's based in Canada's Yukon territory.


3 Comments for The Three Literary Capitals of the World?

Miss Grimke 01.08.09 | 1:01 PM ET

I’ve been to Paris. I’ve been to London. I’ve never seen Dublin or Berlin. But I’ve lived in Boston nearly a lifetime, and I’ve barely begin to plumb its literary depths. On the shelves of the Atheneum, before Alice Walker discovered Zora Neal Hurston, I found a copy of Their Eyes Were Watching God. The book was a first edition. I took it home and read it, and I returned it.  I still haven’t recovered from reading the first sentence: “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”

John M. Edwards 01.15.09 | 4:23 PM ET

Hi Eva:

I’m afraid it’s spurious to choose any other cities other than the literary tryptych of London, Paris, and New York as the bookworm capitals. These centers of publishing influence all the artistic influenza catching and spreading to new epicenters, such as Prague and Rejkavaik. And although Dublin can boast James Joyce and Bram Stoker, your average joe has trouble coming up with other Irish heavyweights, except Guiness, who was supposedly as handy wi9th the pen as the pint glass. My vote for most literary city, though, is Christchurch, New Zealand. The downunder island has the highest literacy rate in the world, and even truck drivers write (good) poetry on the side.

John M. Edwards

Stephen Houston 02.06.09 | 1:13 PM ET

C’mon now John, Joyce and Stoker are hardly all Dublin has to offer; how about Jonathan Swift, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde, WB Yeats…and others. 3 of those are Nobel Prize Winners for their literary contributions, and George Bernard Shaw is the only man to have won both the Nobel Prize and an Oscar…not bad!

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