Confessions of a bibliophile

I've found another place to add to my bucket list of foreign excursions... A London Bookshop Adventure.

No, I'm not thinking about a Notting Hill (starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts) style romance (as fun as that might be) or a touristy trip to Borders (as convenient and tempting as the store is). Rather, I was influenced by the April 2010 issue of Travel and Leisure magazine to delve into the vast number of bookstores which line the streets of London.
Ahh, the joy of a bookshop... walls lined from top to bottom with more books than one can read in a lifetime, colorful titles and un-thought-0f topics, fabulous photography and answers to questions, shocking prices and heart-pounding deals, the smells of fresh paper and the must of ancient script, running a finger along the shelves, stopping at a particularly stunning binding and submerging into a different world for the few sentences read. It makes me feel like Belle from Beauty and the Beast, as she was given the most gorgeous library in the Beast's castle. I have always believed, even as a 5 year old child who watched this movie religiously, that what made Belle the happiest about her library is the opportunity and freedom that reading brings. When she was feeling the most trapped and oppressed in the magical castle, this room was her place to explore, unwind, and sit back in a comfy chair with a fabulous story.

According to Verlyn Klinkenborg, the author of the article Book Lover's London, the best part about London bookshops is their intimacy.
"...what I really crave in a good bookshop-and what London routinely delivers-is a touch of irregularity, a chaos that is partly disorder and partly the inner order of the proprietor's mind. That, and the feeling that to be trapped in such a place--shuttered in by ancestral, yellow coal-fog descending from the chimneys, the ding that hasn't been seen since Prufrock days almost--that would be paradise" (Klinkenborg, Travel and Leisure, 48).
Apparently, the stores in London are often specialized to a particular interest group.
"The antitheses to these omnibus stores are the single-subject shops scattered around the metropolis where you can align yourself politically, geographically, and of course, by genre and age group. Feeling charitable? Books for Amnesty International, in Hammersmith. Feeling socialist? Bookmarks, in Bloomsbury. Merely leftist? Housmans, in King's Cross. Feeling footloose-- ready to hit the road? Daunt Books, of course, on Marylebone High Street, which tantalizes the reader by shelving boods by latitude and longitude. Well, not quite. But that's how it feels as you wander along the shelves, traveling from one corner of the globe to another" (Klinkenborg, Travel and Leisure, 56).
How does such beautiful writing not make you want to go there?

To read the rest of the article, or to develop your own dream of a London Bookstore Adventure, check out the April 2010 issue Travel and Leisure, probably available through your library :)