Chamblin Bookmine

This is not Chamblin Bookmine.

         In the city I live in there is a bookstore called Chamblin Bookmine. It is the largest used bookstore I have ever seen in my (still young) life and after my first visit it became my local happy place. I go there on Saturdays after paydays when, in the grips of the delusion of being slightly wealthier than I was the previous day, I immediately feel the urge to buy some books, when in truth all my money should go toward necessities and I can't afford to buy more books. I shouldn't. I do anyway. 

       This past Saturday was no exception. I made the 20 minute drive north from my apartment humming a happy tune all the way. After several abortive attempts at parallel parking upon my arrival, drawing some curious looks from passersby, I decided to park in the back lot where I always see a car with an I HEART DR. WHO sticker in the back window. That sticker tells me I am in the company of kindred spirits - people who know what a Dalek, a Tardis, and a Time Lord are.

        The inside is a giant labyrinth of raw wood shelves filled to sagging with every possible book you can imagine. There are arrows on the floors and attached to shelves to lead you to corner nooks and new annexes, closet-sized rooms hand labeled  'Horror Room', 'Terrorism', 'Erotica', 'Philosophy'. Everytime I go there I discover a new section I had not seen before. 

        Anyway, there I was, just browsing in the Philosophy section when this gorgeous, intense, Ryan Gosling - look-a-like brushes past me while mumbling 'Excuse me', and he looks at me, and we look into each other's eyes and walk together, trance-like, out of the store to a nearby cafe to drink coffee and discuss who our favorite characters were in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, thus revealing or true selves. And then I snap out of my waking dream to see a creepy old bum leering at me from 'Crime & Suspense'. 

        And I go home - alone, but happy. Why? Because after searching the entire store (and several sections more than once) I found a book that I had been looking for since my time in Cebu -Alain de Botton's On Love, just in time for Valentine's. In light of it being February, my purchases leaned toward the Romantic - Alain de Botton's On Love, The Romantic Movement (also by de Botton), and a collection of short love stories (authors include de Maupassant, Nabokov, Calvino) - an Everyman's Library Pocket Classics edition that's just lovely. 

        Last weekend reaffirmed Chamblin's as my happy place. It's made me think that maybe I can find just what I'm looking for. It may be right under my nose. 

       Picture from photographer's website

       

 *Please excuse the weird sentences, grammatical and typographical errors. It's four in the morning, I'm tired but can't sleep so decided to clean my kitchen and then write this post. Will *yawn* edit later. Thanks for dropping by, Bibliophiles! Please come again soon. Oh, and if you're really bored here's my personal blog ---Sitting Pretty in Cebu City. 


Come again soon! Promise, will actually start talking about a book soon. Promise, also, to be more coherent. 

Sherlock

            Hello, lost person. Welcome to my book blog. I made a resolution to read at least a hundred books this year and this is where I'll write about them. More often than not, I find I'll read a book and months or years later remember very little about it. I'd like to get more out of what I read and really explore the way books make me feel and examine how they're relevant to me...

           Anyway, not thirty minutes ago (It's about 11 pm right now) I went out to get a donut because I was craving something sweet to go with my coffee, and across the street from Krispy Kreme is a Barnes & Noble. They close at 11 on weekends and I often stop by at night when I'm bored and want to just browse. Anyway - I found something that made me giddy with delight; I'm still grinning from post-purhase euphoria. I found, in the Bargain Price section The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes: The Adventures, The Memoirs, and The Return of Sherlock Holmes, PLUS The Hound of the Baskervilles, all in one book - published just as they were in the 1890s in the British magazine, The Strand - WITH all the original illustrations by Sydney Paget. And ALL THAT for just $8.00. Can you believe it?! I could hardly. The only thing that may diminish the luster of my delight is the fact that A Study in Scarlett is not to be found in the book. Hello?! How in the world could they leave out the story where Holmes and Watson first meet? Aside from that, I think it was a very good deal. The pages are thin and newspaper-like, and the book is a facsimile of the original magazine, so you see little imperfections in the letters - I suppose these were portions where the moveable type did not press the ink evenly onto the paper; I think it adds to the charm of the book. Suffice it to say, I can forgive the omission of A Study in Scarlett.