Bookstores. A love note.
I am going to sound like a second-rate romance novelist here, but I believe that walking into an old bookstore is one of life’s greatest pleasures.
I visited one today, and the experience was every bit as rewarding as I’d hoped. I came out with a sensible 6 books, as opposed to the 12 I’d picked up along the way to the counter.
But the book store itself is such a fantastic place. You can feel the weight of wisdom in countless pages around you as you navigate its paper alleys. You can hear a million soundless voices telling their stories to you as you pass. I am awed at the years of untold histories and adventures and loves and sorrows, bound up in plain, dog-eared volumes, waiting impatiently to be discovered by a first-time reader. The wealth in that place is more truthfully measured in bottles of ink than the pencilled-in prices on every first page.
You might not think me serious, or share my love for old books, but I defy you to walk into an antique book shop and not feel the reverence of that place. These stores are cathedrals of the written word. They are homes to myriad characters, portals to a thousand worlds. They are monuments to the imagination.
This all sounds like a bit much for the humble bookstore. And granted, the titles you come across in your forays into the field of literature might as easily be forgettable waiting-room fillers, or trashy Mills & Boone fluff, as they are classic turn-of-the-century detective mysteries, or culture-shaping science fiction.
But in my opinion, it is worth the risk. The hunt itself is half the fun.
So, the next time you pass one of these ancient repositories of human creativity, step inside and go find yourself a well-worn paperback, just for the fun of it, and see what you discover. It might surprise you what you’ll find.
Or you could go to Borders.
