I’ve spent some of the happiest hours of my life in bookstores. When I was a child, I would spend afternoons after school in the Vanderbilt bookstore, reading the science books and science fiction, and occasionally going into the stationary section to admire the new digital calculators (which then cost hundreds of dollars). Today we live pretty close to Kepler’s, one of the Bay Area’s great bookstores; in fact, I did the first public reading for The Distraction Addiction there.
Even though I hardly feel like I lack for good bookstores, when I travel it’s still a pleasure to discover bookstores in other places.
I suppose one could describe the time spent in bookstores as restful or restorative– always stimulating, and at best a little dreamy. I’m reminded of this by a great article in Vanity Fair about Shakespeare and Company, the legendary bookstore in Paris.
I visited there briefly during a trip in 2011, and while I wasn’t there very long, I remember the place being almost the Platonic ideal of a bookstore.
When my wife and I lived in England, one of our more pleasant discoveries was a bookstore in Ely (of all places) called Topping and Company.
Like Shakespeare and Company, it’s wall-to-wall books, an air of devoted bibliophilic eccentricity, and an incredible view of a cathedral. (There’s another Topping in Bath, but the view isn’t as good– but then again, how could it be?)
Well worth the visit.