Karachi seems to be a city where people are not in the habit of reading. The plethora of bookshops here, however, seem to suggest otherwise.

Though I am always reading something, I could not class myself as a voracious reader. But growing up with a mother who reads everything in sight and now married to an academic who will swallow a couple of books a night, I find that Karachi has never left even them low on choice. Second-hand or new, specialised or broad ranged, there is something for everyone. For those to whom Dan Brown is the ultimate literary figure of our times (sadly, a large majority), there is endless choice. Book shops, after all, have to pay their bills. But scratch beneath the surface and you will always find something worth picking up (or something worth drooling over, worth many return visits, involving perusals in a comfy couch and internal dialogues about whether you should just throw caution to the wind and buy it).

I am currently romancing two books. One is The History of Fashion at Liberty books. The other is Breakfast Lunch Tea at The Last Word located in the basement of The Hot Spot. These two books combine many of my great loves: hair, make-up, fashion, history, food, travel. The History of Fashion puts under one roof, so to speak, some of the greatest photographs, trends, models and looks of all time — almost all of the greatest moments in fashion history. I always love a book that you could hypothetically hand over to an invading alien force as a guidebook to human behaviour (or in this case, dress). It’s a monumental book of monumental size and my desire for it is correspondingly monumental. Liberty is full of many such finds.

Breakfast Lunch Tea is a truly superb book about a bakery in Paris. Ostensibly a cookbook, this inside look at the inner sanctums of a beautiful bakery is so much more. Every corner of the bakery is photographed: the entire team, their regular customers, their shopfront and the man who bakes their bread. These “character” photos are interspersed between lovely recipes and sumptuous pictures of delectable food. After you finish perusing the book, you feel as if a giant hand has sifted cool icing sugar all over you.

Time warp: Piccadilly Circus, circa 1919, from Travelogues. Photo: Bina Khan

At the Last Word I also drooled very pointedly over another book and, as a result, I received it as a birthday present!Travelogues is a collection of photographs taken by the renowned travel photographer Burton Holmes, who toured the world from 1892 — 1952. In its pages are sights that you never imagined you would see: Mount Vesuvius erupting and the streets filled two stories high with ash in 1906; a snow-covered Jerusalem in 1920; American troops in an Armistice Day parade in 1918; the Panama Canal under construction in 1912; sunlight filtering through the trees of The Black Forest in 1919; and a gold-rush town’s main street in 1903. Most enjoyable are recognisable places, like Oxford Street, Fleet Street and Piccadilly Circus. Other photos are equally magnetic: punting on the Thames circa 1897, and an aerial shot of the Taj Mahal surrounded by brown wasteland in 1930. The Last Word specialises in stocking books like this — books that take your breath away.

These two shops are easy, comfortable, air conditioned and organised. However, Karachi is dotted with some marvellous, if more humble second-hand bookshops and some shops that are off the beaten track. In Boat Basin, in between hanging chicken carcasses and barbecues, you will find Mr Old Books and Family Book Shop. Both of these are second-hand-book heaven. Recently, I came away from one of them with Antonia Fraser’s book on Cromwell, Mario Puzo’s autobiography (concentrating heavily on the making of The Godfatherand the whole Sinatra affair) and Mary Russell Mitford’s Our Village, to name a few. From Say Publishing in Khadda Market, I unearthed Kevyn Aucoin’s famous books on make-up. Hussain at Itwaar Bazaar is your man when it comes to the classics, books on philosophy or critical theory, visual culture, or history.

Hardcover, leather-bound, esoteric or coffee-table: Karachi has it tucked away waiting for you. The moral of the story? When you see a bookshop, wherever it is, whatever it looks like, dive in. You won’t be disappointed. (If you have kids, for God’s sake take them with you too!)

Beauty and the book: Make-up and photography books. Photo: Bina Khan

All the books photographed here have been purchased in Karachi, with the exception of Vera Wang on weddings and The Art of makeup by Kevyn Aucoin, both of which were gifts.