A Place for Ex-Pats

Since arriving in Paris back at the end of July, I have found myself drawn again and again to the independent bookstore Shakespeare and Company, situated directly across from Notre Dame on the Left Bank in the Latin Quarter. The bookstore is named after the original Paris bookstore owned by Sylvia Beach, a home base for ex-patriates like Anais Nin, Henry Miller, James Joyce and of course my boyfriend Ernest Hemingway. Owner George Whitman carries on the tradition of a bookstore that caters to English-speaking ex-patriates, offering a lending library on the entire second floor and often serving as a type of hostel for starving artists (mostly writers, I would suppose).

While August is slow in Paris, Shakespeare and Company has held some events this month and we joined a group of book- and music-lovers this past week for a literary salon featuring Alice Shyy from The Notewell for a topic called "Book Music." The concept was intriguing: Alice shared music that has been written about books or music written for or to books, to complement the plot of a book or to be listened to while reading (hard for those of us with ADD). She shared a remarkable playlist with kudos to her housemate Iris for her suggestions, and Alice introduced us to a new band we loved named Magnetic Fields. They wrote a song called "The Book of Love" and you must listen to it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkjXr9SrzQE). I think it'll be the newest song in my wedding song repertoire.

I've visited Shakespeare and Company for a variety of reasons throughout the month: to "show it off" to my visitors, to hear the English language spoken and to buy books. I'm bringing home a copy of Pearl Buck's short stories, published in the 1940s, and inside it I found an old Paris Metro ticket stub stuck in the pages as a bookmark. Silly, I know, to buy books while visiting abroad. I'll probably leave some of them in my host's bookshelves as others have done for me.

There's something about the smell of books, the feel and heft of them, the sight of them stacked all the way to the ceiling, that both excites me and calms me. A new book (even a "new" used book) is a new world waiting to be opened. I confess one of the reasons I don't read much fiction is because once I start a book, I usually can't put it down and this wreaks havoc with my schedule. Much of the joy of this visit has been having the time to read novel after novel, like goodies from the chocolatiers. And, as with chocolate, when reading a good book I have very little self-control.

I've thought a lot about the evolution of books with the advent of the Kindle and other hand-held electronic book products. There are folks who swear by these technical miracles that hold hundreds, even thousands of books within its "pages," deeply appreciated by flight attendants and corporate road warriors who no longer have to schlep heavy books with them on their flights. Still, when you're sitting in a corner at Shakespeare and Company, surrounded by stacks and stacks of books and people who love them, it's hard to imagine a world without books.