The entrance recalls one of the masses of  remainder-stocked, clearance stores around Tottenham Court Road, but the interior does not disappoint.The ground floor makes for an easy, that is to say, undemanding welcome with rows of recent fiction and classic literature with the itinerant running the additional the risk of being held captive by rows of stationary: diaries, notebooks, calenders, postcards and the like.

Upstairs, via an uncommon stairwell, finds the shop changing into a little bookshop, as an actor falls into character; the reader here becomes a willing hostage, wandering amidst random passages and corridors created by neatly arranged shelves, each strategically positioned in relation to another. The tightly defined subject shelves nonetheless melt one into the other, effortlessly, anonymously.

I am particularly engrossed with Sheldon Wolin’s most recent work (and generally perturbed by the pricing of books in the heart of the EU). A woman waltzes by, wrapped up in warmth but still carrying the sting of cold, one that sticks to her winter clothes. It feels as if she has brought an invisible cloak of the icy outside indoors. It burns like a scent.

That’s what I miss about Old Europe and its early spring chill.

Further down the road, before le Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, is another creature. Sterling Books is a friendly place – almost out of place in the dour Brussels day. Yet its charm offensive fails: the books are all too topical, the rows of shelves in an indecent straightness to one another. Worse still, even the lazy, late winter sun did enough to dispel its attempted coziness.

See further the list of Top Shelves.

While researching the bookshop, I subsequently clicked my way to a fascinating site, probably as close to a labour of love as is possible these days: www.bookstoreguide.org; it does exactly what it claims (“an amateur guide to book shopping throughout Europe”). Their blog contains a detailed write up on bookshops in Berlin, too, something I would have so enjoyed.

I’m tempted to apply this concept to Asia, but perhaps Singapore is a more manageable – if also limited – starting point. Check back if this comes to fruition.

It’s not all “Me, me, me!”, however, as Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron indicates, while the gravity of Giorgio Agamben’s Potentialities spins us close to our dancing star. On a more serious note: due to consolidation within the book trade, whereby independent bookshops die slow, painful unnatural deaths, London is, alas, now the book-buyer’s Paradise – though precisely not the bibliophile’s. The latest to depart its terrestrial home and meet the Great Librarian above is the SPCK bookshop specialising in theological volumes. When will it end? (or when will the ending cease to end?)