Within its walls breathes the spirit of the sea, not only the nearby ocean, but also the books they keep. Arousing curiosity, Hirigoyen* bookstore sees an openness in other places, a way to slip into other people’s shoes in foreign literature – and thus understand them better. In a busy alley in the heart of the old town, where it meets the Nive Ador, Marie Hirigoyen opened her fourth bookstore after adventures in Brittany and Lyon.

Also Read – “The Mirror”, “The Golden Bird of Kines” … Selections by Fabrice Dounis from Le Camfrire Bookstore

The Basque Country, where she spent her childhood and adolescence, now likes to welcome around thirty writers a year. At the beginning of the school year, Laurent Gaudet, Philippe Besson, Olivier Adam and Dion Meyer, the South African author of detective novels, come to visit Bion readers. Meanwhile, lovers of travel stories, great reports, and surfing (a sport that knows how to respect books!) will find their joy in this tome in pocket or landscape format.

*5, rue Port-de-Castets, 64100 Bayonne.

Bestsellers: “Such Little Things,” Claire Keegan (The Pocket Book), “Misogyny,” Claire Keegan (Sabine Vespies)

Let’s summarize Little things like this Like a common man’s generosity to girls who lost their freedom for “sinning”. As the year-end festivities approach, lumber and coal merchant Bill Furlong is busy making deliveries to customers, including a neighborhood convent. In the village, the nuns who manage it are said to house the illegitimate children of those living abroad. If Bill isn’t the type to believe the rumors, an encounter with a cool girl in the building’s coal storage room forces him to act…

This poignant and beautiful story, steeped in poetry, recalls a long page in Irish history. Claire Keegan excels at short looks: her new one proves misogyny, published by Sabine Vespeser Editore in May. I can’t thank this independent publishing house (which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year) enough for introducing me to this author, whose books I recommend to my clients, and they ask for more!

Favorite: “A Cliff at the End of the World” by Carl Nixon (L’Aube)

It’s not summer without a detective novel! Here is a great story that takes us to the end of the world. On the west coast of New Zealand, in the late 1970s, a car fell off a cliff. On board, a family newly arrived from England called the Chamberlains. Parents die, children survive.

From this terrifying opening scene, Carl Nixon weaves a highly effective plot, a suspense that grips the reader from the first page to the denouement. As the pages shed light on this family’s past and the fates of those in danger, the mystery rises… but not much more to say than that the author has a gift for evoking nature. savage of the island from which it originates, imagine how man can survive there.

Finding: “Wild Lords,” Jim Harrison and Gary Snyder (Wild Project)

The bookstore devotes a section to the environmental thinkers who welcomed the reprint of this high-profile conversation between the immortal Jim Harrison and his friend and iconic Beat Generation poet and anarchist Gary Snyder. Their exchanges focus on nature, how it can be assimilated and put into words, its place in the American imagination, and America’s attitude toward indigenous peoples. They open with an introduction by Bryce Mathewsant and end with poems in Snyder’s bilingual edition. The editor says of this dialogue that it makes a connection between the counter-culture and the current thinking of the environment, which seems to me very reasonable. A simple book that anchors us in a philosophy of practical and essential everyday life, sprinkled with humor and delicious anecdotes.