Julie Lehmann

“vision she’d had. Volumes were stacked everywhere: on shelves, in great heaps on the floor, in a zigzag line running up a ramshackle flight of stairs. Books owned the space. She took a long, deep sniff; this was not the industrial scent of ink, paper, and cleaning fluid of ordinary bookstores. She took another breath: People had eaten sandwiches and onion soup here, they’d drunk wine and beer as they paged through the books, fallen in love around them. Moving into the shop, she noticed a small blond girl roaming around, picking up volumes with grubby hands. Nobody seemed to mind; nobody stopped her. These books were not destined to sit sedately on tables or be shelved in alphabetical order; these books were meant to become part of your life.”
― Ruth Reichl, The Paris Novel