Friday, December 7, 2012

The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.

~Italo Calvino

2 comments:

HeidiInHolland said...

I just had to 'talk' more with you about bookshops. In Holland, they are disappearing already. My husband and I love Foyle's in London as it brings us to a different time. We have not great bookshops like that here. We also have less and less nice bookshops and no secondhand places like you see in England or the US. Do you have them where you live?

Hugs from Holland ~
Heidi

Trish said...

I am fortunate to live near a library and several bookshops, both used and new. They are surviving but struggling, saying that it is hard to compete with online prices and the ease and availability of ebooks. As much good as the internet does for us in terms of information and connection, it just simply cannot replace or improve our physical surroundings and actual human contact. There is a sense of quiet excitement when I walk into a bookshop, a sense of knowledge, adventure, history, imagination, warmth and community. I am so sorry to hear you have so few places like this in Holland! I think every town should have a bookshop just like every town has a grocery store and gas station. Food for the body, gas for the car, books for the mind... So far we still have them here in Canada and the US but they are getting harder to find. I imagine (hope!), though, that physical books and bookshops will have enough supporters that there will continue to be something somewhere for us to read, buy, trade or borrow even if it is just a small shop attached to a bigger business. I'm cautiously optimistic but worried as well. If ebooks are here to stay then hopefully it will be a side-by-side existence with print books.

Thanks for bringing up the issue of bookshops! It is indeed worth talking about.