Portugal Reads!

The people of Portugal, or at least the city of Lisbon, read.  Apparently a lot.  I've never seen so many bookstores.  There are fewer than 600,000 people in the city and less than 3 million in the metro area, but bookstores galore.  There is a large branch of Spain's big department store, El Corte Inglês, in Lisbon that has a substantial book department.  (Think of Macy's with a whole lot of books.)  There are large entertainment stores with major book sections.  (Think of Best Buys with about 25% of the floor space devoted to books.)  And there are lots and lots of independent bookstores.

In addition, people in Portugal read serious stuff.  Each store I saw had prominent sections devoted to heavy topics like philosophy and political science.


While I never ran across a children's bookstore, each of the independents that I ventured into had great kids sections.

Pó dos Livros was one such store.  It was located near our hotel, so it merited multiple visits.  There was a very limited English selection, but of high quality books.  The children's section even featured a number of titles in English.

My daughter purchased a copy of a Bobbsey Twins book that was originally published in 1961.  Though it was not her thing, she read almost all of it before giving up.  "I like mysteries.  But they spend more time talking about flying a kite."  Times change.

My favorite find was Diário de um Banana, the Portuguese version of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books.  From the best I can figure, "banana" in Portuguese is the same word as our banana, but it also means "wimp."  The Portuguese version of the book has a really cool website.  Check it out!

- Dave