“BOOKSTORES: How to Read More Books in the Golden Age of Content” — About bookstore again…
I know, I know I’m writing this in the wrong order, I still didn’t tell you about how I bumped over Max Joseph on YouTube and how he is making a series of videos all linked like a book, kind of a series of visual essays, but hey, who told you that to make sense a history has to be told in the right order? Many movies would be ruined if we told them in the right order, ’cause it would ruin the plot twits at the end, right? So let’s begin this history from here, from the most meaningful part of it, until now…
I already told you how I love bookstores right? If you don’t remember, check it here and then get back to this text, the fact is, I love bookstores, but I don’t love not having how to buy books that I want for my kindle on a physical bookstore. Even so I go to them, I browse the shelves, I find new books, I add them to my list on Amazon and the cycle repeats, the thing is, there is this aura around a bookstore that really help me feel fine, I like being surrounded by books and by this oppressing feeling that I’ll never have the time to read them all…
And I’m not alone on this one, Max also has this feeling and he decided to travel around the world, looking for the most beautiful bookstores in it and for a way to read more books in its lifespan, and this made me think about it too. But first let’s watch Max film:
Oh, and it has a whole chapter just about Brazil’s most beautiful bookstores:
BOOKSTORES: The Lost Brazil Chapter (extra scene):
So after watching Max film I was touched, like, I read around 12 books a year, if I leave the common Brazilian lifespan, I would live like 80 years, so I get another 50 years, wich makes me reading around 600 books on my average lifespan, hey, and maybe it will be 599 because maybe I’ll be dead without finishing that last book, and although this is more than the average Brazilian reads, it still isn’t enough to me, I feel that I need more, but then, the film tells me exactly what I need to hear, it is not about reading more, reading faster, but it is about sitting down, getting a book and enjoying the time with this book like a meditation.
Another thing that it got me thinking is that Brazilian editorial market is going down, we had many amazing bookstores, but some, even one that Max was supposed to visit here was already closed, or closing. I don’t have a bookstore here in my city, we have a café that has some books for sale, but it is a few shelves on the back and sells the same books it sold when it was a proper bookstore. And that is growing, news about big bookstores getting closed ’cause they got bankruptcy, some are being accused of terrible conditions for the workers there and that makes me sad, being on beautiful bookstores is awesome to me, but being in one I know that is on it’s final days or in some that I know that is run by terrible people and that this awesome guy that is totally helping me with a smile on his face is suffering much because her employers are putting all this burden on his shoulders really get me sad.
And this whole bankruptcy thing really makes me loopback to that problem I have, how can I maintain the bookstores I got working if I can’t buy my eBooks there? How can I help that cool girl that suggest me exactly the book that I was looking for to beat his selling goal if I can’t buy my eBooks on his store and put the sell on his account? And I still don’t have this answer but is something that I’m always thinking about it… How can I do it?
Max’s film was awesome to me, like REALLY REALLY REALLY awesome, his storytelling, the way it is edited, the bookstores it showed, and in this I got to highlight Ler Devagar in Lisbon, Portugal is so cute and minimalist and at the same time cluttered and beautiful and WOW, I’m in love with that bookstore, but back on track, the bookstores it showed are so awesome that I just want to live inside them, but above all of this, I think that the best part on this film is that it shows us that in this age of content creation, we are forgetting to let everything go and just enjoy simple things, why do I have to read 12 books a year? I don’t, I want to but I don’t need to, because if I find that one book that will take me the whole year to read but at the end of it I’ll have spent a simple time with myself and learned a lot, not only from the book but from myself in these me times, it would be better than to read a pile of 50 books and at the end be like tired and don’t even remember a single lesson a learned with it…
So, if you read to this point without watching Max’s film, go back, watch it and them if you have the time, share your thought with me, let’s talk about how we that buy eBooks can help bookstores, and if you prefer to read a lot or to read in a meditational/meaningful way… I still don’t know the answer, but knowing the questions already make me want to read more so I can find these answers…
