Feels Like Home

By Angela Buckingham

Some bookshops, the very best bookshops, are more than just a place of commerce where you can buy books. The very best bookstores make you feel like you belong in their space. They offer the magical opportunity to find oneself within their walls. It is that wonderful experience that makes the best bookshops feel like home.

Few bookstores do this as perfectly as Todo Modo Bookshop in Florence. The books have been carefully selected with obvious love and attention, spanning topic, writing styles and authors from across the globe. There are offerings in both Italian and English. Many of the illustrated books are works of art in their own right.  There is a cafe nestled in the heart of the store, inviting you to sit down and read, have a coffee, talk to a friend. The back of the book store is at once a cosy theatre and a children’s book section, with the whole space offering nooks for one to sit and peruse the books at leisure. This is a place for reading, thinking, performing, talking and listening. It is the sort of place every community needs. 

And so, it is much more than just a place of buying and selling. It reminds us of all books can give us and how we have to support those who bring us such fabulous books.