it has the most beautiful books. there is one section of the bookstore that is full of first editions and special copies. there is one section for all the classics. i love the poetry room and the children's section. when you go upstairs you enter a new area where you can't buy the books, only read them. there is a piano for strangers to play and notes all over that wall.
"some people call me the don quixote of the latin quarter because my head is so far up in the clouds that i can imagine all of us are angels in paradise. and instead of being a bonafide bookseller i am more like a frustrated novelist. this story has rooms like chapters in a novel an the fact is Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are more real to me that my next door neighbors and even stranger to me is that fact that even before i was born Dostoevsky wrote the story of my life in a book called the idiot and ever since reading it i have been searching for the heroine, a girl called nastasya filipovna. one hundred years ago my bookstore was a wine shop hidden from the seine by an annex of the hotel dieu hospital, which has since been demolished and replaced by a garden. further back in time year 1600, our whole building was a monastery called "la maison du mustier." in medieval times each monastery had a frere lampier whose duty was to light the lamps at nightfall. i have been doing this for fifty years now it is my daughter's turn."
i have been to this bookstore many times. one week i even went four days in a row. there is nothing more satisfying than the feeling of coming home with a new book. it is a place full of the spirit and hope of artists, writers, and poets. it is packed with the appreciation and love of words and literature. book lovers are abundant, and everybody knows that people who love books are the very best kind of people.
What a wonderful description of a great little nugget of history. And yes, book lovers are the very best kind of people.
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