A bookshop is a peaceful sanctuary of silent voices waiting to be heard.
Mala Naidoo
This might seem a rather pointless post, a step beyond idle into the inane thoughts of a writer sitting too near the edge. After all, buying books is the same as any other consumer pursuit, isn’t it? Well, it would be if bookworms weren’t involved. Most people buy in terms of what they need, whereas a bookworm will purchase a book without room left to store it. All publishers have to do is design a pretty cover and bosh, they’re all over it like wasps over spilled honey. We’ve been told that leaving the EU will require stocking up on Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Pont l’Évêque but bookworms already have literature covered. They could survive a nuclear winter without looking up to inquire what’s happening.
I have spent a significant amount of time in book and record shops, the two most important things in life now cheapened by easy availability and the anodyne experience of shopping with tax-evaders such as Amazon. The commitment to finding a Japanese only 3″ cd single of an extended album track that the band themselves are unaware of existing meant coinciding romantic weekend breaks with record fairs or scenic coastal towns with a 2nd hand record shop. Prehistoric hunting and gathering might have sublimated into buying books and vinyl, but it also strained two relationships and probably finished one off entirely. Such pursuit is now mitigated by a three-second google finding the contact details of a seller in Basingstoke.
Anyway, back to book shops. They can be daunting places, particularly Daunt books (boom), although I’ve never met anyone unpleasant in a bookshop. There’s a hushed atmosphere unique to bookshops, and which it could be bottled and siphoned into war zones could probably result in world peace. It could also make shopping centers more pleasant and make Corbyn less angry. It’s the being surrounded by Imagination, as though the hidden recesses of the human drive to make shit up has been neatly compartmentalized into alphabetical order by book gnomes. If you listen carefully you can hear the clash of swords, broken nibs, a Victorian curse at missing a hansom cab, or the wail of police sirens as a foreign spy drops neatly to a Westminster pavement. My children know that like entering the TARDIS normal rules no longer apply, and instead of a dismissive ‘no way’ to suggestions that I buy them something, is now met with an ‘oh, go on then.’ Who can refuse a child a book? This does, however, mean that I tend to visit them on my own.
I recently found myself on Clapham Common, a place that involves memories of Gay Pride, topless dancers, and a giant red stetson, when I spotted a bookshop. I swore not to go in, before relenting, and instead allowing myself in on the promise that I don’t buy anything. It was after all cold and raining, so I needed the shelter. Actually, that’s not true. It was a gorgeous summer day, so I guess it provided welcome shade. Like going into a pub holding a pint, I was already reading a book, but it was too tempting. And of course once confronted by so may shelves of alternate lives and eye-catching artwork, well. (I bought The Forensic Records Society by Magnus Mills for the, wait for it, the record.)
Most bookworms are unable to open their bedroom door due to the TBR (To Be Read) pile, but it doesn’t stop them. The problem is books go off, it’s love at first sight, but unless it’s immediately consummated it turns stale, other spines catch your eye, and it drifts down the strata of the TBR pile. A book needs to be as fresh as a holiday shower following a day at the beach. Holidays, of course, are an ideal reason to buy new books. I once trekked over Asia with the Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion by James Gordon Fraser in my rucksack that accounted for half my allocated luggage weight, and still hadn’t read it on my return. It did, however, make a useful pillow.
I need to buy some novels to go away, although I still have Moonglow by Michael Chabon if it weren’t buried below The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter by Cherry Radford and Micro-Serfs by Douglas Coupland, which I somehow missed at the time. I guess the only thing to stay away from a bookshop, just breathe, but oh, it’s that sanctified air of a bookshop that I need.
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Originally published on Idle blogs of an idle fellow
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