Mexico's bookshops are doing something unusual: growing. While bricks-and-mortar stores have been shrinking in many wealthy countries, Mexican chains keep opening branches, and the capital remains the best place in the country to browse shelves in person.
Mexico City has a pocket that reads like a booklover's map. Where Avenida Miguel Ángel de Quevedo meets Avenida Universidad, five minutes from the bohemian quarter of Coyoacán, three big stores — Gandhi, El Sótano and Fondo de Cultura Económica — sit alongside a dozen smaller shops. Outside, wooden trays hold books at throwaway prices; inside there are discounts on the more durable stock.
Chains worth knowing include Cafebrería El Péndulo, a coffee-shop-bookstore hybrid with branches in Polanco, Condesa, Roma and San Ángel; Librerías Gandhi, present in 24 of Mexico's 32 states; El Sótano and Casa del Libro, each with more than a dozen locations; and Gonvill, the biggest chain in Guadalajara, a city that also hosts a major international book fair each year. Expect wide Spanish-language selections, shelves pushed past capacity with neat stacks of overflow, and a sideline in gifts, games and puzzles — a commercial compromise, but one keeping the doors open.
English and French titles get a shelf or two at stores like Gandhi and El Péndulo, though hunting a specific title is hit-and-miss. If you need a new release in English right now, options are limited: Sanborns' roughly 150 stores carry international magazines and current bestsellers, department stores vary wildly, and online orders ship to Mexico but not fast. Ebooks are the workaround — and Mexico's ebook market works like anywhere else. Amazon Mexico sells Kindles with a near-complete English and Spanish Kindle store; Apple Books and Google Books cover their respective devices. There's also a local twist: Gandhi and Porrúa partner with Kobo, selling its eReaders and their own ebooks that work on the Kobo app or device. Savvy readers keep several platforms open, since prices and availability differ.
For travellers, this is quietly useful. Long bus rides and beach afternoons demand reading material, and Mexico's cafés-bookshops — El Péndulo above all — double as pleasant places to spend a rainy afternoon. If you read in Spanish, you're spoiled; if you don't, download before you go or treat the browsing as the experience and the ebook as the backup.
