Bookstore Lovers (Don't get ideas)

Ever since I was six, way back when “going out” meant going cycling with a bunch of dungaree wearing neighbourhood kids, there has been no other experience that I’ve enjoyed more than exploring a bookstore. A bookstore is one of those places that physically and emotionally affect all my senses in the most glorious indescribable ways.

Rows and rows and stacks of new, crisp and colourful books. How gorgeous they feel under your touch, fresh pages that have not been read yet and the smell of the pages and the print, all ready to be given a home. Bookstores are rooms with endless possibilities and not a single one has yet disappointed me. I would spend hours at one of them, going through all the books that I could reach and fiddle with. The beauty perhaps lay in the selection, my mind reeling with all the options I would select the book that looked the prettiest, or had my favourite character or if I felt adventurous, one that I had never heard of.

The habit still remains, only now I love old bookstores too. A tattered book with yellowed pages are the ones that carry history apart from the stories that the print itself tells you. If I find one with a mysterious dedication on the front page, in a handwriting that I will never know belongs to whom, that is a book that holds great pleasure for me. A book lover has an addiction, I can vouch for that. Sometimes at night, such an addict would lay awake in bed and have stupendous dreams of building in their home a library that people from all the world over would travel to visit.

The reason why I have penned, alright, “typed” the above thoughts is because I tried surfing through some online bookstores to see if I can expand my addictions, experiment with some new variations of the drug, you know, be wild! But unfortunately, the websites don’t hold the same charm. I cannot feel the books, smell them or see them all stacked up in a row or go through a tedious process of selection. I hope someday soon, convenience gets the better of me and I actually do try one out.