Bookstores, takeaways and the joy of browsing

From i-taka-da-picha

 

An off-hand tweet (is there another kind?) to D.E Meredith & David H Headley got me thinking.  I compared buying a book form a bookshop versus online as the difference between eating at a restaurant and getting a takeaway from it.  Either way you get the same food, and the latter is always cheaper.  So if it was only about money, you would always choose the takeaway option when you could.

 

Of course we don’t do that.  We can make coffee at home but we still buy it in a cafe and sit by the window.  It’s the experience we want as much as the thing; of watching the world go by, of being a different person in this different place, of just getting out of the damn house.

 

I regard the extra pound or two I pay at a bookshop as the price of admission; with it I buy the experience of browsing.  Even when I know that I’m looking for, I always make the time to wander, pick up unfamiliar authors, see what else is around and what people are reading.  It’s the only kind of shopping I enjoy.  I don’t get the same charge looking through racks of clothes or diving into record bins, but I understand the feeling.

 

Buying a book should not be simply another economic transaction, an acquisition of more stuff.  It should be a swan dive into dreams and knowledge.