:The Bookseller:
A bit of lovely reading, in between the hustle, bustle, snow, wrapping presents and Christmas baking....
“It is the most friendly vocation in the world,” he announced…“A bookseller is the link between mind and mind, the feeder of the hungry, very often the binder up of wounds.
“It is the most friendly vocation in the world,” he announced…“A bookseller is the link between mind and mind, the feeder of the hungry, very often the binder up of wounds.
There he sits, your bookseller, surrounded by a thousand minds all done up neatly in cardboard cases; beautiful minds, courageous minds, strong minds, wise minds, all sorts of conditions.
And there come into him other minds, hungry for beauty, for knowledge, for truth, for love, and to the best of his ability he satisfies them all…Yes…it’s a great vocation.”
“Great than a writer’s?” asked Felicity.
“Immeasurably,” said Grandfather. “A writer has to spin his work out of himself and the effect upon the character is often disastrous. It inflates the ego.
Now, your bookseller sinks his ego in the thousand different egos that he introduces one to the other…Yes…Moreover, his life is one of wide horizons. He deals in the stuff of eternity and there’s no death in a bookseller’s shop. Plato and Jane Austen and Keats sit side by side behind his back, Shakespeare is on his right hand and Shelley on his left.”
He paused for a moment while Felicity took Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights gently away from him. “Yes. Writers, from what I’ve seen of them, are a very queer lot, but booksellers are the salt of the earth.”
Elizabeth Goudge, A City of Bells
Love that!
ReplyDeleteA City of Bells is one of my favorite books... ever!
I feel like Henrietta and her family really exist. You MUST (if you haven't already) read the two sequels.
Well, sequels of sort as Sister of the Angels is a small Christmas novel and Henrietta's House is a small fantasy novella.
I recently finished A City of Bells and I adored it!!!
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