The Book Loving Friend
It's been so long since I've been in an English language bookstore, I mean one devoted to it, with just rows and rows of books full of English. I sometimes get this anxious, shaky hands give-it-to-me feeling when I imagine bookstores full of English books back home. This is one of the things I'm looking forward to doing soon after I return, perhaps the very next day. I am tempted to make my parents, who are picking me up at the airport, drive me straight to a bookstore, but as I'll have been flying and waiting between planes for about sixteen hours altogether, I think I may just want to go home and sleep. Although that may be too weird to be back in America too, so perhaps a bookstore after a restaurant would be appropriate. In any case, I have been fantasizing about all this to a high degree and have realized that I really like to look in bookstores with a second book-loving friend so we can come across books and show the other one, say this looks interesting, they ask the right questions that a reader's reader asks, you discuss things about the book even down to the design and choice of cover images and fonts, tell each other what you've heard or not, delight in discovering something neither has heard of and looks like a keeper, etc. but I have realized I don't think I have any book loving friends near my town. And now more than ever I will have need of book loving friends to catch me up on what all has changed in the bookstores while I've been gone. So many new books, so much new book gossip, so much so much!
Someone who fits the book loving friend description should come to the Warren/Youngstown area of Ohio around April 25th. I'll be waiting.
6 Comments:
Flying back to the US from Asia is much more draining than the other way. The two times I came back from Singapore, I drove home from the airport and went right to sleep. It's a damn exhausting flight. So you may want to wait until the second or even third day back to hit the bookstores.
Yes, I love to go with a friend to the Strand here in New York. There are so many unusual and exotic items on display and all these little nooks and crannies where one can pursue one's interests. And I'm told by those who've looked at them that many of the books are in English too!!
Rick
I've been reading your blog for a couple of months - since last summer. Around Christmas I was looking for fairytales, and in a totally round about way utterly separate from your blog ended up reading and loving the Barbed Wire Boy. Then being pleasantly surprised that I'd found your writing twice. Just wanted to say belated thanks. Enjoy the bookstore heaven.
Hi anonymous, thanks for the well wishes, and I'm really glad you liked the Barbed Wire Boy.
Rick, weirdo.
Jason, thanks for the advice!
ooooh, me me me, i wanna go to the bookstore with you!
giant hearts,
brooke
Yay!! Can't wait!
Giant hearts back,
C
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