Rare Book Monthly
Bookstores in Costa Rica
Libros Nueva Decada; Lorena Ramirez, the almost only woman taxi driver in Costa Rica.
Garrett's insurance company, Garrett & Asociados, supports the library. It is a non-profit organization. The members pay a small fee for their membership, which helps with the upkeep. The library offers books that cover a wide range of classics, fiction, and reference, all in English and all shelved by the Dewey decimal system. They also have an excellent selection of children's books, business books, art books, and are getting new things in every day. Members come in, sign up, pay the fee, and can keep the books for as long as a month. Besides Leslie and Nicole, there are several volunteers that come in to shelve books. The atmosphere is very friendly, home-like, and has a small lounge and coffee area for people to relax and peruse books they might wish to borrow. Their website, www.lexiconlibrary.com, is interesting. We bid Leslie adieu, promising to send a box of newer mysteries and other fiction, and went on our way.
In our continuing search for bookstores, we went, at the suggestion of Brenna Ruiz-Gordon, a delightful young student friend, to the University of Costa Rica's part of town, San Pedro. We had found, so far, that most bookstores, generally called Librerias, were places where they sold textbooks, notebooks, newspapers, cigars, snacks, kids' books, and magazines, but not many general interest books. We found that to be true almost everywhere except in San Pedro, with its proximity to UCR. Here we found several used bookstores; Clara Luna's and Libros Nueva Decada, were two of them.
We also found one bookstore that was a tiny vegetarian restaurant or "soda" as their cafes are called. We never could find Clara Luna's open. We went back a couple of times during our stay and it was still closed. We asked around and other shopkeepers nearby said that the owner came in "algunas veces - sometimes".
We did locate one spiffy new bookstore called Libreria Antares. It was pristine clean, all new books, all in Spanish, well lit, and empty of customers. Most of their books were the "required reading" books for University courses. The two clerks were most cordial. The woman spoke excellent English, the man, none. I interviewed them, asking about the problems of book dealing in C.R. They have, they said, many of the same problems we have -- books are expensive, hard to find, and, in their case, most have to be shipped from other countries, which is very expensive. They reiterated what others had told us; that people in C.R. don't read much except text books. They also said the same thing Leslie said; Ticos are literate, almost all read and write, but rarely read for pleasure. Our friend Brenna is an exception to that rule; she reads a lot, but she also speaks excellent English and she spends a good deal of time in the U.S. where she has a sweetheart. We wandered the University district for a while, finding Libreria Universitaria, a text and technical bookstore with a small, but interesting collection of fiction and nonfiction in Spanish, English, and German; lots of German books in the little hotel bookshelves; lots of German tourists.
