5 Perfect Places To Read A Book In Paris

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Aug 23, 2024

“Walking Paris is often described as reading, as though the city itself were a huge anthology of tales. It exerts a magnetic attraction over its citizens and its visitors, for it has always been the capital of refugees and exiles as well as of France.”

Rebecca Solnit | Wanderlust

Friends,

Paris is without a doubt my favourite city in the entire world <3

I’ve had the pleasure of visiting her with both lovers and friends, but my solo trips are always the most special. From London, the Eurostar will get you to Paris in just 2 hours and 16 minutes (!) and once you’re on the fancy French tracks, the quiet in the carriage is perfect for reading. Here’s my five favourite places to read a book in The City of Love ❤️

In case you missed it, I shared a post on Porto a few weeks ago, you can find it here.

ONE: in the gardens of the Musée Rodin

There are shaded benches and quiet spots everywhere in this huge, central museum garden that are perfect for reading. Don’t miss the museum though, I love to spend time with this delicious marble sculpture.

📌 77 rue de Varenne, 75007 Paris
🔗 Musée Rodin

🚇 Varenne

TWO: at the BEST independent bookstore (imho)

If the queue of tourists outside Shakespeare & Co is bananas, they now have a lovely café right next door as an alternative to bookshop reading or people-watching. I do recommend trying to get into the shop and heading up the stairs - there are lovely comfy chairs and sofas scattered around where you can lose yourself in a book. I’m not a fan of Hemingway or his writing, but I can understand why he and many other writers chose to spend their time here. I learnt the term ‘tumbleweed’ from a recent read of Ruth Reichl’s The Paris Novel - a term for the guests who lodged at the bookshop.

Owner George Whitman explains how the word came to be — ‘From the first day the store opened, writers, artists, and intellectuals were invited to sleep among the shop’s shelves and piles of books, on small beds that doubled as benches during the day. Since then, an estimated 30,000 young and young-at-heart writers and artists have stayed in the bookshop, including then unknowns such as Alan Sillitoe, Robert Stone, Kate Grenville, Sebastian Barry, Ethan Hawke, Jeet Thayil, Darren Aronfsky, Geoffrey Rush, and David Rakoff. These guests are called Tumbleweeds after the rolling thistles that “drift in and out with the winds of chance,” as George described. A sense of community and commune was very important to him—he referred to his shop as a “socialist utopia masquerading as a bookstore.”

Three things are asked of each Tumbleweed: read a book a day, help at the shop for a few hours a day, and produce a one-page autobiography. Thousands and thousands of these autobiographies have been collected and now form an impressive archive, capturing generations of writers, travelers, and dreamers who have left behind pieces of their stories.’

📌 37 rue de la Bûcherie, 75005 Paris
🔗 Shakespeare & Co

🚇 Saint-Michel Notre-Dame

THREE: in a café that serves the best boiled eggs & soldiers

A concept store and a used book café, Merci is a perfect spot for reading. Take my word for it - order the eggs! The only place in the world where they’ve had their tops gently removed and put back on for me :)

📌 3111 Bd Beaumarchais, 75003 Paris
🔗 Merci

🚇 Saint-Sébastien - Froissart

If you’re a foodie, the basement floor at Merci is entirely dedicated to the kitchen. Gorgeous French linens and small kitchen accessories that I really don’t need but buy anyway 🫠 Like this, this, and this. I love that this would be a ridiculous purchase in Britain but perfectly normal in France.

FOUR: at the flea market

The largest antiques and second-hand goods market in the world, with more than 5 million visitors per year - Marché aux Puces de Paris Saint-Ouen is a magnificent place to lose yourself in a book. Closed Tuesdays to Thursdays, I just learnt that this flea market has been around since the Middle Ages 🤯

Find a quiet café and a book and spend a few hours here.

📌 110 Rue des Rosiers, 93400 Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine (just outside Paris)
🔗 Marche Aux Puces De Saint-Ouen

🚇 Garibaldi | Porte de Clignancourt | Porte de Saint-Ouen