On the need for small bookshops

I have just come back from Librebook, a bookshop in Brussels where my book is on the shelf. This sounds nonchalant, but it’s a big deal. Not for the world, granted, but it is for me. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s a surreal feeling to know that my book is available for other eyes, beyond those of friends and relatives, to read. It was next to books by other grown-ups, and it sure felt as if my book was a baby among the big boys. I almost felt like going up to it and asking it if it was doing OK. I didn’t, though, because I’m sure it would have cried, the way little kids cry when you leave them in the kindergarden. I would have also cried, like parents do when they leave their little kids in the kindergarden.

I would like to give a special shoutout to Librebook. It’s a small corner bookshop that has an amazing range of books in over thirty languages, mainly English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish (or those are the ones I can read, anyway, so they’re the ones I pay attention to). The best thing about it is that it’s run by people who love what they’re doing, and that’s the big difference between it and any big chain. I try to do as much of my shopping as possible in small shops, and even more so when it comes to book shopping. In a large chain you can get the latest bestsellers, yes, and they’re comfortable, sure, but in a small shop you can ask the assistants ‘what other books would I like if I’ve liked X?’. That’s an advantage that money can’t buy.

Expanding on this shoutout, I would like to briefly use this small platform (anyone there? Hello?) to encourage everyone to buy in small shops instead of large chains. I could get political about this, but I won’t. Actually, I’ll do it, but only briefly and tangentially: I’ll just explain how I was recently in Namur, Belgium, which is a lovely town with a medieval centre that is peppered with the same shops I have seen recently in Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Amsterdam, Madrid, Rouen and others. I find it extremely impoverishing to a city to have the same uniform experiences as every other city in the world. Why would you travel if it’s not to see different things?

But back on topic, on a related note, there’s a big Brussels bookstore, Filigranes, which is moving to a smaller location. There are reasons beyond economy for this move, but it’s still a tragic sight when a repository of culture and civilisation has to move to a smaller venue.

Now, my book is also available in other places, including Waterstone’s and that web site with the name of a mythological tribe of warrior women and the largest rainforest in the world, and those locations are handy if you don’t live near a bookstore. However, there is nothing that compares to going into a physical space full of books and knowing that behind each of those covers is a story that you could find fascinating. In a small shop such as Librebook, those stories are given the importance they deserve, because each one is acknowledged as having required years of work by an author. Then, when you visit a different city, you can find bookshops that you’ve never seen in your life. I was in Montreal last year and I was able to ask the owner of a bookshop about a good Canadian author along the lines of X and Y, and I came away with a lovely comic book by Julien Paré-Sorel. In a big chain you can buy books, but you could just as well be buying yoghurts. As long as it makes money, everything is fair game.

It’s going to seem as if I’m completely opposed to large shops and that I would be spray‑painting mean messages on their doors at the slightest chance, but that’s not the case either. I appreciate that not everyone likes the same things and that sometimes you have one of them nearby and it’s simply more comfortable. That’s fine, but, given the choice, I would encourage you to opt for the smaller shop whenever possible. That applies to any kind of shop, really, but most certainly to bookshops.

I realise that I sound like a hopeless romantic and that this kind of attitude hardly fits the modern world. Sure, I’ll accept that. I also won’t back down.