Books on the Seine

 

So I was scrolling randomly through my Twitter feed the other day and this image pops up:

 

 

I was actually in this bookstore! Eleven and a half years ago! I walked those painted stone floors and perused those dusty, wonderful shelves!

Back in the spring of 2012, my wife won a trip to Paris at her annual sales meeting. I blogged about it extensively here all those years ago. One evening, a Thursday I think, we booked a restaurant overlooking the river Seine with the Cathedral of Notre Dame on the far side just off to the left (we already visited that magnificent church). It was within walking distance of our hotel, and as we meandered along the riverbank to the eatery my wife noticed Shakespeare and Company and urged me to venture inside.

Unfortunately, and not unexpectedly, the vast majority of the books were in French. Oh, if I had a magic genie, I’d ask to be literate in that language. I tackled it back then but just had no aptitude for the phonetics and linguistics. The wife did all my speaking and translating that week.

But inside this fresh-out-of-the-nineteenth-century bookstore there was an English section, and in that section appeared an entire “vertical” shelf devoted to – science fiction master Philip K. Dick!

I was a huge devotee of PKD back from, say, 2004 to 2012, and devoured his books and short stories, his nonfiction essays, and even a biography. It hardly made any sense, but it was fun and intriguing. However, all these books – and there were about two dozen of them – all were of the oversized paperback variety. Basically hardcover size with a flimsy cover. (These are my least favorite type of book, design-wise.) And they were all priced around 20 euros a piece – around $26 each at the going exchange back then. Too pricey and too ugly for a souvenir, but in a weird way I appreciated their presence at this venerable bookseller. I left after a half hour, purchaseless.

One other memory of Paris, re: books. As you walked along the Seine, there’d be these mobile stands that sold traditional-sized paperbacks and magazines every block or so. I was fascinated with the type of literature being sold here, for it was a window into the mind of these sellers as what the typical tourist would want to buy, and indeed must have bought in the past. I recall the most insane book I saw at one of these stands – a novelization of the 1980s American TV show Dallas … in French! Qui a tiré sur JR? (if my Google translate is being faithful to the idiom).

Anyway, today is for me a mental health PTO day from work. I plan to read, watch a classic 50s sci-fi flick, drive out for a sandwich at lunch and maybe pick up a record. Happy Friday!