The Bookshop Book

On 10 May 1933, in Bebelplatz in the centre of Berlin, the Nazis burned more than 20,000 books. Nowadays the sculpture of an empty library stands in the square, created by Micha Ullman and large enough to contain every one of the books burned. A plaque there quotes Heinrich Heine: 'Where they burn books, they will also burn people.'

If you fall in love with reading young, it's something that will stay with you throughout your whole life — you might not find yourself reading all of the time, but you will always go through periods of wanting to be around books, and the worlds that they offer.

The days when we sit down with a book so good we don't get up until it's read — those are some of the best days of our lives.

All books hold a history. I love second-hand books for that fact: you just hold them in your hand and they're full of story, apart from what's written inside them.

Bookshops are full of stories. Not just stories on shelves, but those hidden away. There are the stories of bookshop owners, and all the books they read that made them fall in love with reading. There are the stories of authors, and why they wrote their first book. There are the stories of second-hand books, and all the people who owned them. And there's the story of every single customer who walks through the door. We all love stories, with their sense of mystery and adventure.

Whatever your problems, a book is a point where you can stop in a moving world.

As she said this, I resolved immediately to get married inside a bookshop one day, and berated myself for never having thought of it before. As Gerrie says: 'Who wouldn't want to get married in a room full of love stories?'

You see, bookshops are dreams built of wood and paper. They are time travel and escape and knowledge and power. They are, simply put, the best of places.

Perhaps that is the best way to say it: printed books are magical, and real bookshops keep that magic alive.