April 9, 2013

Fun at Bookstores

The Institute For Things To Do With Books is happy to present a new game for all those odd, bookish people out there. We here at the IFTTDWB headquarters fondly call it ‘That New Bookstore Game.’ Here’s what you do. Go into your neighbourhood big-box bookstore (the bigger and boxier, the better). Browse through the fiction, poetry, history, essays, and philosophy sections – basically, anywhere you would regularly buy and read – and collect a nice pile of books you would very much like to buy, to read through, to shelve, to own. (During this part of the game it’s important to avoid the teapots, candles, kitchen/bathroom accessories, and all the other non-book paraphernalia that your neighbourhood big-box bookstore likely stocks on the first floor). Now: find a place to sit. A wicker chair, a table at the in-house (and, most likely, corporate) cafe, even the floor, will suffice. Look through your selected titles. Feel the weight of each book in your hand, feed on the words and images of the cover; time permitting, pick a short story or a poem or an essay from one of the books – say, perhaps, that one by David Foster Wallace about eating […]
April 25, 2012

Bookstores (On the Hunt)

Dispatch From The Institute For Things To Do With Books’ Field Agent For some months now I have been on the search. Not for buried treasure, not for the elixir of life, not for untapped reserves of energy, no, but for something that at times is all three: a book. It has been a slow journey. The book is The Rape of Europa, by Lynn H. Nicholas, and it is the comprehensive story of what happened to Europe’s art during the Second World War. I became aware of The Rape of Europa when I came across mention of it in an article I was reading: the book was cited for its description of the evacuation of the Louvre moments before the invasion of Paris by the Nazis. Imagine it: trucks loaded down with the treasures of France, convoying west out of the city in the pitch black, their headlights off to avoid detection, “The Raft of the Medusa,” that gigantic painting of people dying at sea, catching in the power lines. My attention was snagged, my cognitive faculties on fireworks mode: I needed this book. So I did what I always do: I went to my neighbourhood’s used and independent […]