For as long as I can remember (at least eight years), Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop has wrapped around another small shop in the Cornstore. You could enter the bookshop from the street, browse the displays in the main room, skirt along the edge of the shelves into fiction, step down into the history/art history/travel room, backtrack through fiction to classics and literary criticism, take a quick glance around health/psychology, move into Irish Interest, and giggle at the children’s books on your way out the back door.

The bookstore recently expanded into the space formerly occupied by the smaller shop. There is now an entire room of Irish interest, with its own entrance, located between the history/art history/travel room and the kids’ section. Book-browsing in Galway has a much more circular flow these days.

Oh, and they’re having a sale all weekend to celebrate.