visit to a bookshop

Today, I visited a bookshop "Du Yi Bookshop" because my girlfriend needed to buy some highlighters. It has been a long time since my last visit to a bookshop, and i realised that the bookshop is dying.

Bookshops, to a reader, invoke a special kind of emotion. A fellow worshipper of books would understand - a bookshop was like a church. You know, sacred grounds. You expected something of it. It had to feel right, honest. It must celebrate the right books. It must not stray away too much from its core purpose - not too much stationary and not too much music cds - otherwise it becomes a stationary shop, a music cd shop. And it should attract the right people. Well, the people who deep down truly love to read - let's just call them "readers".

When I was a kid, i made it clear to my parents I preferred to sit in a bookshop to read than to accompany them shopping. So after noticing that i was serious, whatever mall it was that we visited that weekend, the bookshop became the babysitter. My parents would deposit me at the bookshop, told me they be back at a particular time and then i sat down to read waiting to be collected. So you see, I was born a reader. And then I started having those headaches which kept me at home. So, what else could I do, I started reading almost all the time till the headaches were gone (surgery, long story). That was when i read my favourite book. Its called The Count of Mount Cristo. Like re-watching my favourite movies, I still re-read it once a while. So it was to my sheer delight that in one of my favourite movies, V for Vendetta, the character V mentioned that the movie adaptation of the Count of Mount Cristo was his favourite film. This may come across rather nerdy, but that realisation made me very happy. So, you can see I did read religiously, seriously and without much regard as to taste.

Anyway, I do digress. I was just sharing my story as a reader growing up.

As I grew up, I learnt that there were differences between bookshops. There was Popular - a mass market bookshop whose focus appeared to be textbooks and children books. Up one rank was Borders - which by allowing the reader to read in the bookshop - suggested to me that Borders believed reading was more important than profits (which of course made me buy more books) - and hence superior. Then there are the greats - two of which i had the fortune to visit - City Light Books in San Francisco and Shakespeare & Company in Paris. They were meeting points for great writers and were physical spaces where important (literary and otherwise) events happened. They were places where, if a bookshop was a church, they were the cathedrals.

But the end is near and today, as I stood outside "Du Yi Bookshop" (which replaced Popular), I no longer see a bookshop. I also realised that it is happening everywhere. The signs are obvious. Borders closed. People reading kindle on the trains. Most of the space at bookshops cater to textbooks or stationary. The signs are for all to see - the bookshop is dying. At the rational level, I recognise that because the book is digitised (and hence, pirated), book sales must have plummeted and this was inevitable. It would be too expensive to distribute and market books that not enough people read. Successful bookshops today must sell stationary, textbooks, best sellers and magazines to survive. But yet, I can't help a feel a sense of loss - perhaps its nostalgia i feel.