stories from zaragoza: the greatest bookstore in the world. seriously.
here it is:
http://www.porticolibrerias.es/home.htm
i have no pictures to go with this, and i will go with the usual excuse: taking a picture was the last thing we were thinking of. it was our last day in zaragoza, and we had been walking forever by that point: chain bookstores, post office (where i spent an hour writing cards), university, and further into the city was this specialized bookstore that giulia had found on the internet. not super complicated to find apparently, but baffling enough for me (i was suffering from slight shopping-related stress). i remember it was very windy. not even getting lost sounded adventurous enough to shake me.
so we enter the store (from the outside it was almost unspottable, and it looked closed. i think we knocked and no one answered, so we had to ring the bell. a grey-haired lady came and let us in) and it's...nice enough. a small room, the usual shelves in the middle and along the walls. just literary criticism. giulia asks about the art and history books - oh, they're in the back room, in the deposit. so she goes in. i think nothing of it and continue to rifle through the, whatever: text theory. short stories for esl students.
then giulia comes back and is like: "you have to come and see this!!!!" and i go with her into the back room. people, it looked like the back of a library! it was bigger than the library storage rooms we had at our university! and looking around, all those books were interesting, quasi-new, properly organized in their respective shelves. (i think we decided they must've been ordering them straight from university pressses and such.) i was in there just for a few minutes, giulia probably half an hour, but there's no way you could encompass what was going on in there in that little time. it was probabily the most overwhelming moment i've had in zaragoza. (more on this, a bit below.)
we returned to the lady at the till, to pay and for her to write down our contacts. giulia talked to her in spanish, i tried french (i can't manage spanish, she couldn't say much in english). it became a sort of babel, because everyone could understand any of the languages interjected, but wouldn't necessarily reply in it. she was very nice (everyone in zaragoza was nice!!) and answered our questions about the store. apparently it used to be much bigger (!!) and located near the university, and they had to move and resize because, recession. she sounded well-mannered and restrained, but passionate. she complained in her distinguished way about politics and how less and less people read nowadays. she was....so much my definition of a 'real lady': thin and elegant, dark gray jacket, glasses, short haircut, gray hair...her shoes fascinated me.
carmen, later, walking away from the bookstore: "did you notice her shoes???!!!"
giulia: ....no....
carmen: i know, you were looking at the books!
but seriously. her shoes were brown leather that looked soft, well worn, graceful yet entirely without pretension. they looked like they fit her perfectly in every sense. i know my aspirations are a bit out of whack, but, i want to be that. i want to grow old that way. (and yes i'm convinced spending time among books makes a difference!)
i'm addicted to reading, okay, but at my core i'm pretty minimalistic regarding possessions. i like beautiful things and meaningful things, yet i can't take too much of that at once. bookstores intimidate me, like anything that is a big collection of things. it's a labyrinth, a trap, it will claim me and encumber me and waste me.
but also, as opposed to museums or malls or downloading programs, bookstores make me feel acutely that my time is limited. they hit me where it hurts most, make me feel not only poor, but small, ignorant and hopeless.
but these are just flashes. i'd reurn to bookstores and libraries anytime, for:
1. the possibility of building a bubble by just focusing on one section or one book. (this is like life, really. )
2. the smell - of new books, of old books.
3. the surprises.
and no, i don't want to envision a time when all reading happens online and businesses like Portico have to close down.
http://www.porticolibrerias.es/home.htm
i have no pictures to go with this, and i will go with the usual excuse: taking a picture was the last thing we were thinking of. it was our last day in zaragoza, and we had been walking forever by that point: chain bookstores, post office (where i spent an hour writing cards), university, and further into the city was this specialized bookstore that giulia had found on the internet. not super complicated to find apparently, but baffling enough for me (i was suffering from slight shopping-related stress). i remember it was very windy. not even getting lost sounded adventurous enough to shake me.
so we enter the store (from the outside it was almost unspottable, and it looked closed. i think we knocked and no one answered, so we had to ring the bell. a grey-haired lady came and let us in) and it's...nice enough. a small room, the usual shelves in the middle and along the walls. just literary criticism. giulia asks about the art and history books - oh, they're in the back room, in the deposit. so she goes in. i think nothing of it and continue to rifle through the, whatever: text theory. short stories for esl students.
then giulia comes back and is like: "you have to come and see this!!!!" and i go with her into the back room. people, it looked like the back of a library! it was bigger than the library storage rooms we had at our university! and looking around, all those books were interesting, quasi-new, properly organized in their respective shelves. (i think we decided they must've been ordering them straight from university pressses and such.) i was in there just for a few minutes, giulia probably half an hour, but there's no way you could encompass what was going on in there in that little time. it was probabily the most overwhelming moment i've had in zaragoza. (more on this, a bit below.)
we returned to the lady at the till, to pay and for her to write down our contacts. giulia talked to her in spanish, i tried french (i can't manage spanish, she couldn't say much in english). it became a sort of babel, because everyone could understand any of the languages interjected, but wouldn't necessarily reply in it. she was very nice (everyone in zaragoza was nice!!) and answered our questions about the store. apparently it used to be much bigger (!!) and located near the university, and they had to move and resize because, recession. she sounded well-mannered and restrained, but passionate. she complained in her distinguished way about politics and how less and less people read nowadays. she was....so much my definition of a 'real lady': thin and elegant, dark gray jacket, glasses, short haircut, gray hair...her shoes fascinated me.
carmen, later, walking away from the bookstore: "did you notice her shoes???!!!"
giulia: ....no....
carmen: i know, you were looking at the books!
but seriously. her shoes were brown leather that looked soft, well worn, graceful yet entirely without pretension. they looked like they fit her perfectly in every sense. i know my aspirations are a bit out of whack, but, i want to be that. i want to grow old that way. (and yes i'm convinced spending time among books makes a difference!)
i'm addicted to reading, okay, but at my core i'm pretty minimalistic regarding possessions. i like beautiful things and meaningful things, yet i can't take too much of that at once. bookstores intimidate me, like anything that is a big collection of things. it's a labyrinth, a trap, it will claim me and encumber me and waste me.
but also, as opposed to museums or malls or downloading programs, bookstores make me feel acutely that my time is limited. they hit me where it hurts most, make me feel not only poor, but small, ignorant and hopeless.
but these are just flashes. i'd reurn to bookstores and libraries anytime, for:
1. the possibility of building a bubble by just focusing on one section or one book. (this is like life, really. )
2. the smell - of new books, of old books.
3. the surprises.
and no, i don't want to envision a time when all reading happens online and businesses like Portico have to close down.
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