bookshops

They are a brilliant device for shape-shifting as we can slip into the skin of authors from other times, other cultural backgrounds, brilliant minds who give us a new perspective on life and the world - something we all need from time to time. - Cornelia Funke

Walking into a bookshop is a depressing thing. It__ not the pretentious twats, browsing books as part of their desirable lifestyle. It__ not the scrubby members of staff serving at the counter: the pseudo-hippies and fucking misfits. It__ not the stink of coffee wafting out from somewhere in the building, a concession to the cult of the coffee bean. No, it__ the books. I could ignore the other shit, decide that maybe it didn__ matter too much, that when consumerism meets culture, the result is always going to attract wankers and everything that goes with them. But the books, no, they__e what make your stomach sink and that feeling of dark syrup on the brain descend. Look around you, look at the shelves upon shelves of books _ for years, the vessels of all knowledge. We__e part of the new world now, but books persist. Cheap biographies, pulp fiction; glossy covers hiding inadequate sentiments. Walk in and you__e surrounded by this shit _ to every side a reminder that we don__ want stimulation anymore, we want sedation. Fight your way through the celebrity memoirs, pornographic cook books, and cheap thrills that satisfy most and you get to the second wave of vomit-inducing product: offerings for the inspired and arty. Matte poetry books, classics, the finest culture can provide packaged and wedged into trendy coverings, kidding you that you__e buying a fashion accessory, not a book. But hey, if you can stomach a trip further into the shop, you hit on the meatier stuff _ history, science, economics _ provided they can stick __op._ in front of it, they__l stock it. Pop. psychology, pop. art, pop. life. It__ the new world _ we don__ want serious anymore, we want nuggets of almost-useful information. Books are the past, they__e on the out. Information is digital now; bookshops, they__e somewhere between gallery and museum.

A book can become your best companion in times of crisis.Not only do you learn in the journey of your pages, but rediscover yourself, with your virtues and defects ... often makes you question everything, even life itself.The books are fantastic, as they not only transport you to other places and the awakening of sensations, curiosity, laughter, hilarity, sadness, etc. Other times, it can give you a quiet space in truculent moments, and lead you to a level of peace, acceptance, healthy optimism, that I will never tire of recommending it.Never stop reading, there are no excuses ... there are always some minutes in any place, at any time and a huge universe for all tastes !!!

What exactly is it you'd like to know? [the book store manager asked]. He had an odd expression, like he was asking her a trick question. [Katherine] thought a minute. What DID she want to know? Why had she taken the trouble to come out in the cold to learn about a woman she'd never heard of until yesterday? She had that feeling she got when she was doing her art and suddenly discovered the missing piece that ties everything together: a tingling in the back of her neck, a crazy buzzed-rush of a feeling that spread through her whole body. She didn't understand the role that Sara Harrison Shea, the ring Gary had given her, or the book he had hidden would play, but she knew that this was important, and that she had to give herself over to it and see where it might lead.

So many books to read, will I ever finish reading?

There was also something about the smell of bookshops that was strangely comforting to her. She wondered if it was the scent of ink and paper, or the perfume of binding, string, and glue. Maybe it was the scent of knowledge. Information. Thoughts and ideas. Poetry and love. All of it bound into one perfect, calm place.

In a town like London there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money.

I love books because I don't have to wait for the commercials to be over to find out what happens.

These days, we've got booksellers in cities, in deserts, and in the middle of a rain forest; we've got travelling bookshops, and bookshops underground. We've got bookshops in barns, in caravans and in converted Victorian railway stations. We've even got booksellers selling books in the middle of a war. Are bookshops still relevant? They certainly are.All bookshops are full of stories, and stories want to be heard.

Keynes was a voracious reader. He had what he called __ne of the best of all gifts _ the eye which can pick up the print effortlessly_. If one was to be a good reader, that is to read as easily as one breathed, practice was needed. __ read the newspapers because they__e mostly trash,_ he said in 1936. __ewspapers are good practice in learning how to skip; and, if he is not to lose his time, every serious reader must have this art._ Travelling by train from New York to Washington in 1943, Keynes awed his fellow passengers by the speed with which he devoured newspapers and periodicals as well as discussing modern art, the desolate American landscape and the absence of birds compared with English countryside.54__s a general rule,_ Keynes propounded as an undergraduate, __ hate books that end badly; I always want the characters to be happy._ Thirty years later he deplored contemporary novels as __eavy-going_, with __uch misunderstood, mishandled, misshapen, such muddled handling of human hopes_. Self-indulgent regrets, defeatism, railing against fate, gloom about future prospects: all these were anathema to Keynes in literature as in life. The modern classic he recommended in 1936 was Forster__ A Room with a View, which had been published nearly thirty years earlier. He was, however, grateful for the __erfect relaxation_ provided by those __npretending, workmanlike, ingenious, abundant, delightful heaven-sent entertainers_, Agatha Christie, Edgar Wallace and P. G. Wodehouse. __here is a great purity in these writers, a remarkable absence of falsity and fudge, so that they live and move, serene, Olympian and aloof, free from any pretended contact with the realities of life._ Keynes preferred memoirs as __ore agreeable and amusing, so much more touching, bringing so much more of the pattern of life, than _ the daydreams of a nervous wreck, which is the average modern novel_. He loved good theatre, settling into his seat at the first night of a production of Turgenev__ A Month in the Country with a blissful sigh and the words, __h! this is the loveliest play in all the world._55Rather as Keynes was a grabby eater, with table-manners that offended Norton and other Bloomsbury groupers, so he could be impatient to reach the end of books. In the inter-war period publishers used to have a __athering_ of eight or sixteen pages at the back of their volumes to publicize their other books-in-print. He excised these advertisements while reading a book, so that as he turned a page he could always see how far he must go before finishing.A reader, said Keynes, should approach books __ith all his senses; he should know their touch and their smell. He should learn how to take them in his hands, rustle their pages and reach in a few seconds a first intuitive impression of what they contain. He should _ have touched many thousands, at least ten times as many as he reads. He should cast an eye over books as a shepherd over sheep, and judge them with the rapid, searching glance with which a cattle-dealer eyes cattle._ Keynes in 1927 reproached his fellow countrymen for their low expenditure in bookshops. __ow many people spend even £10 a year on books? How many spend 1 per cent of their incomes? To buy a book ought to be felt not as an extravagance, but as a good deed, a social duty which blesses him who does it._ He wished to muster __ mighty army _ of Bookworms, pledged to spend £10 a year on books, and, in the higher ranks of the Brotherhood, to buy a book a week_. Keynes was a votary of good bookshops, whether their stock was new or second-hand. __ bookshop is not like a railway booking-office which one approaches knowing what one wants. One should enter it vaguely, almost in a dream, and allow what is there freely to attract and influence the eye. To walk the rounds of the bookshops, dipping in as curiosity dictates, should be an afternoon__ entertainment.