Donnerstag, 18. Juli 2013

Magical


"Our Bookshop Manifesto

WE BELIEVE IN THE BOOK. We believe in quieting the noise and listening to the stories. We believe in traveling far and wide between paper pages. We believe in touching the words, scribbling in the margins, and dogging the ears. We believe in surrounding ourselves with books long finished and books not yet read; in revisiting our younger selves each time we pull old favorites off the shelf.

We believe in five-year-olds inking their names in big letters on the flyleaf. We believe in becoming someone else for four hundred pages. We believe in turning off the screens and unplugging the networks once in awhile. We believe in meeting the author, reading the footnotes, looking up the words and checking the references. We believe in holding our children on our laps and turning the pages together.

We believe in standing shoulder to shoulder in comfortable silence with our fellow citizens before a good shelf of books; we believe in talking face to face with friends and strangers in the aisles of a good bookstore. We believe that together, readers, writers, books and bookstores can work 



If you believe, please join us: SAVE THE WORLD. BUY A BOOK."


Gallery Bookshop & Bookwinkle's Children's Book, Mendocino


I've been to this Californian bookshop twice, for the first time in 1987, and then again some months ago, and all I can say is that they really live up to their principles which are written down on their website as this manifesto. I have quoted it here and took the liberty to emphasize the word "magic" ...  which it truly is when - as they say - readers, writers and bookstores work together and combine their efforts to establish a garden which then stands in full bloom. It is always worth a try.





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