In the 2017 selection of the "Top Ten Most Beautiful Bookstores in Jiangsu" by the main board of the Jiangsu Provincial Press and Publication Bureau, Vientiane Bookstore ranked second only to Pioneer Bookstore. Vientiane Bookstore is one of Nanjing's oldest bookstores, originally founded in 2003. Originally a professional academic bookstore, Vientiane Bookstore transformed into a bookstore integrating books, coffee, music, and movies in 2013. The Vientiane Bookstore was forced to close its doors at the end of April 2015 due to rent problems, which attracted huge attention from the locals in Nanjing, and a year later, the bookstore moved its location and reopened with the help of various parties.
The new Vientiane Bookstore has two floors, which still retains many of the characteristics of the old store, and the store layout continues the style of the past. The bookstore has put a lot of thought into the space design, and the main display table at the entrance separates the dining area from the reading area to create a better reading atmosphere. The collection of books in Vientiane Bookstore is not huge, but it is better because of the wide variety of books. The first floor is mainly for literature, art, life, parent-child and other types of books, and the second floor is for history, academic classics, social science, economics and management and other types of books, and there is a special publishing bookcase for Nanda Publishing House. Vientiane Bookstore also pays attention to detail and has designed children's bookshelves to be lower than other bookshelves to make it easier for children to access books. In terms of book display, Vientiane Bookstore only has a simple area prompt and does not subdivide the books, so it is very time-consuming to find books, and readers are advised to ask the store staff for help.
The main display table and the golden book space often show the connotation and style of a bookstore. The main display table of Vientiane Bookstore is the raw edge book booth, which is a binding method, that is, the printed book is not cut after binding, and the pages are connected to each other. Rough edge book is a book binding style advocated by Lu Xun, but it is very rare nowadays, and it is difficult to find a copy. Vientiane Bookstore focuses on the "NTU Story" series of books published by Nanjing University Press, such as "NTU Canteen" and "Cat in the Ivory Tower".
Vientiane Bookstore has always had a lot of activities. Since 2014, Vientiane Bookstore has cooperated with Houlang Publishing House to launch the "Vientiane Houlang Screening Room", setting a different screening theme every month, and screening a number of films that fit the theme, which will be screened at 7 p.m. every Friday. The bookstore selects films rigorously, and the selected films are also very high-quality, such as Hong Kong movies with the theme of "The True Color of Heroes" and "The Thief of Time", and "The City of Scorched Earth" and "Room" with the theme of Mother. Vientiane Bookstore will also hold new book sharing sessions, book recitals, celebrity talks, etc. from time to time, and invite industry scholars to visit the bookstore to communicate with readers. Bookstore activities need to be registered, for more information, please pay attention to the bookstore's official account.
The reading area occupies almost half the size of Vientiane Bookstore, and the bookstore has ample seating for readers to read and rest. The bookstore is located next to the northwest gate of Nanda University, which is not easy to find, and it is precisely because of this that the overall atmosphere of the bookstore is quiet and the reading experience is better.
