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My Favourite Bookshop
Outside, it’s the real world. Through the window, I see the covers. I don’t dare smudge the clean glass with my nose and my ten oily fingers. I submit; they have their hold.
I push through the glass door of the corner shop and enter. Encircled by wood, cardboard, ink and paper, I pick up a book. The pages fly at me. They speak the language of the artist. I enter and listen, each one a world. My brain expands to unknown dimensions, and I’m surrounded by living, breathing forms. Some of them are foreign. Some come from these shores and have never left. Most have an international aura – customers and books alike.
There is light entering through the two walls made of glass. The other walls are opaque and hold the value. Tables with horizontal surfaces hold more. From there, I follow down the steps, where offerings abound, tucked in wherever they fit. Every step is a potential stopping point, to fondle and caress, flip and suppress, be cajoled, to wake up distressed. The mind is most welcome.
Downstairs, the same truth applies, yet there is a feeling of truncation. A wall is too close and one must excuse oneself to the next. The books are heavy, small, long, short, funny, thick, thin, oddly shaped. Piled high, along shelves, underneath, on top, down below, to one side. Over there, there are some more. Uncompromising selection. Artists touting their wares – ideas – in, on, through and by pages. They all remain closed, waiting.
Books, books, books, nothing else but artists’ books. The books are not free. The cash register is located on the ground floor, complying with current economic principles and artists’ rights. Dante’s Hell, Purgatory, or Paradise – one must apply. But possibly, the shop is a mesh of all three.
Koenig Books
80 Charing Cross Road
London WC2H 0BF
T 020 7240 8190
If you have a bookshop you’d like to recommend to Pen Pusher readers,
then we’d like to hear about it – send suggestions of up to 380 words to editors@penpushermagazine.co.uk or alternatively send them to:
Pen Pusher Magazine
13a Myddelton Square
London EC1R 1YE
Hunting Raven Books
The Book Inn
Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights
Topping & Company
Ocean Books
Langtons
Church Street Books
Oxbow Books