Readers listen to a lecture in the Last Bookstore in Los Angeles. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Holding a book in their hands, some readers sit on the steps that lead to the lounge bridges, where shelves of books occupy whole walls. For others the urge to have their photos taken in one of the world's most beautiful bookstores is irresistible.

There are about 300,000 books, or about 100,000 titles, in the store, and the owners say book sales account for half the store's revenue, but if it is bestsellers you are looking for you will not find them in the most conspicuous spots of the store.

Books are organized according to theme, knowledge system and lines of thought: literature, arts, cookbooks, decoration and lifestyle, and so on.

At the entrance are albums of paintings by masters such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Leonardo da Vinci. Walking into the store, you can see the newly published Chinese edition of the novel the Hag-Seed, by the Canadian Margaret Atwood, and the Chinese edition of Das Buch der verbrannten Buecher, about Nazis burning books in Hitler's Germany, by Volker Weidermann.

The shop's multipurpose function is alluded to in the name Fang Suo Commune. The idea is of a third space, an alternative to home and the workplace, a haven that is different to a public library or a shopping mall where people can read, drink, date, hang out with friends, attend a lecture or an exhibition, buy interesting things, or just wander about the place.