If you’re looking for rare books or – even better – rare books in Spanish, there’s a new shop in Hyde Park where you can find them: Livra Books and Curiosities.
Moctezuma Seth González opened the bookstore last weekend.
There, you’ll find all kinds of books – from a book published in the 1700s on how to properly use opium to a book signed by Salvador Dalí to a first edition of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
Gonzalez will gladly show you his rare finds. He has a surgical pathology book with what he calls "funky images." The book is in Latin but it has notes in French.
"What's really special about this book is that it has the annotations of a physician," he said while carefully unfolding a piece of paper glued to the book. It's a note that's dated 1756. "I call it a 1700's post-it note."
You might already be familiar with Gonzalez. He started selling books online over four years ago. Then, in 2022, he had the idea of creating a pop-up bookstore in his backyard on 45th Street. Every so often, he'd set up bookshelves loaded with books costing anywhere from $5 to a few thousand dollars.
It didn’t take long for him to have regulars. People would come back over and over again in search of weird books and books in Spanish.
Now, Gonzalez has achieved one of his dreams: opening a brick-and-mortar store. The shop on Guadalupe Street is filled with plants and trees because he wanted to keep the same vibe from his backyard bookstore days.
“What other bookstore has an 8-foot-tall ficus tree?” Gonzalez asked when describing the shop.
Most of the books at Livra are affordable, and many are in English. But there’s also a special room at the back where you’ll find the pricey and rare books. And when we say “pricey,” well, let’s say you probably would only buy them if you were a rare book collector like Gonzalez.
When it comes to unique books in Spanish, Gonzalez has some gems among his collection. He owns a first edition of El Laberinto de la Soledad by the Mexican Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz. It's signed by the author as a gift for renowned artist Rufino Tamayo. And while that’s not for sale – for now – it’s worth thousands of dollars and is one of Gonzalez's most valuable possessions.
The books at Livra are from all over the world – from Argentina to Mexico City to New York. When Gonzalez goes to Mexico City, he visits tianguis (markets) and old bookstores in search of rarities. He makes a point of bringing back books in Spanish that nobody else will have.
That’s because Gonzalez wants to make sure Spanish-speaking Austinites have access to books that carry a cultural meaning.
“Not having a bookstore for them is almost irresponsible,” he said.
Born in the U.S. to Mexican parents, Gonzalez takes pride in his American Mexican identity and wants others to do so as well.
“I feel very proud to be Mexican and to handle material that was written by my people, about my people,” he said.
He said he's aware libraries carry books in Spanish – “but you don’t just want to read Dan Brown’s book in Spanish and that’s it."
And he's not really interested in selling translations of American books. He prefers to bring books about the Zapotecas or a photo book from the renowned photojournalist Pedro Meyer.
Gonzalez said he has taken inspiration in what people are doing in Dallas, like Wild Detectives, a local bookstore that carries books in Spanish and has constant bilingual events. Or the translated books publisher Deep Vellum, which also owns a local bookstore.
Gonzalez hopes to one day sell books at the Congress Avenue bridge, just like booksellers do along the Seine in Paris. He also wants to work with publishers in Mexico and Latin America to be able to bring the latest novels to Austin for Spanish speakers.
But for now, he’s happy to go treasure hunting in tianguis and old bookstores all over the world so Austinites can have rarities among their own collections.
Texas Standard's Sean Saldana contributed to this report.
