The Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart

Apologies for the hiatus, but STML has been out of town. And not just out of town, but down to Waterloo, under the Channel (Champagne's free on the Eurostar, you know), and into Paris, home of one of STML's favourite bookstores in the whole wide, wide world, Shakespeare and Company, that enduring edifice on the left bank of the Seine.

If you don't know the shop, I advise you to get there by hook, crook, or jetski, ASAP. Failing that, you should read its remarkable history, as well as this delightful piece by its founder, the legendary George Whitman, who wonders "if all along I have just been playing store on one of the back alleys of history, putting obsolete books on dusty shelves while people are riding the information superhighway from one end to another of the global village." There are worse things to do.

The shop is frequently stuffed with American students, both as staff and customers. Not naturally an Americaphile, neither am I a -phobe, and I was much cheered by the following exchange, overheard in the shop. Student one to student two: "I have so many books at home, I don't know why I'm buying more." To which student two archly replied: "You're not just buying a book, you think you're buying the time to read it."

Books, like the love affairs which Paris itself so artfully inspires, exist outside the currents of normal space and time, in the hearts and minds of the beloved and the enthralled, and as such endure long after their physical passing. The trouble with both is finding time.