INTOXICATED BY BOOKSTORES AND LIBRARIES

If you are at all like me, books never cease to allure you, delight you, amaze and even intoxicate you.

I would rather spend time in a bookstore than a museum, and I dearly love museums, which may explain why I especially adore used-books bookstores — and public libraries, too — because they are like bibliophilic museums, only better, because you are allowed to handle the old artifacts on display.

There is something special about old books and the perfume they release — a trace of mustiness and earthiness, with a hint of vanilla mixed in — when you turn the pages, foxed and yellowing and slightly brittle from age. Used-books bookstores smell sweeter than a nursery greenhouse.

However, I also find delight in new books and independent bookstores where the staff can ask you a few questions and then give you a perfect recommendation that, to borrow from Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, really knocks you out. Furthermore, indie shops often have reading nooks and dog-eared couches that invite you to pleasantly linger a while. Timbre Books in Ventura and The Bookworm in Camarillo are two of my favorite cozy bookshops.

Too, I love libraries. The most beautiful library I have ever been inside is at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, a cathedral of the printed page where the priceless Book of Kells, dating back to 800 A.D., resides. When Jorge Luis Borges said, I have always imagined Paradise will be a kind of library, I think he had this Trinity College library in mind.

 

To read the complete article, see:
Woodburn: Intoxicated by bookstores and libraries (https://www.vcstar.com/story/opinion/columnists/2022/09/16/woodburn-intoxicated-bookstores-and-libraries/7988282001/)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
LOOSE CHANGE: MAY 29, 2022 : Trinity College Dublin Library Restoration (https://www.coinbooks.org/v25/esylum_v25n22a31.html)

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