Found in a Bookshop

by Stephanie Butland

We know the power of a book. Let’s not forget the power of a letter. It’s doing the same thing as our beloved books, only in a more specific way. It is taking feelings, knowledge, requests and hopes, and transferring them to paper. And then that paper conveys the feelings, knowledge, requests and hopes, and unfolds them in front of someone else. No wonder people who love books also love letters.

A bookshop needs to be used. It’s as simple as that. The money keeps the doors open, but it’s the people, the conversations, that keep it alive.

Readers can hold complex thoughts, contradictions and moral oppositions in their minds, quite comfortably. It’s one of the skills that we learn from words on a page.

but I don’t want to be helped in a self-help sort of a way. I want fellow-feeling. Camaraderie in the form of a novel.

In short: you, dear reader, are correct. You are always correct. Not only in what you imagine, but in what you feel. You are allowed to not-love the novel the rest of the world is raving about; you are allowed to cordially loathe your sister’s favourite author. Reading is not a test. Whether or not you love a book is not a matter for debate; and not something you can be persuaded into. Books are the magical everyday that is all your own. Read on, and enjoy.

Loveday knows she ought to be angry but she can’t quite muster up the energy. Just another moment where someone else’s inability to cope is bumping up against her own life.