Metz Book Festival & books about books
Serendipity brought me to Metz the very weekend the town hosted its book festival, Le livre à Metz. Littérature et Journalisme.
I didn’t have time to attend any panel or conference but I had time to browse through books in the giant book store set up in a tent on the main plaza of the city. The talks were nearby and the festival has its own literary prizes. I’m not much interested in literary prizes in general, so I didn’t bother enquiring what these ones were about.
I looked at the list of writers invited and signing books but I didn’t know many of them, probably because I don’t read a lot of contemporary French literature. Anyway.
There were quite a lot of people at the Grande Librairie and I loved wandering from one bookshop to the other, looking at the displays they had designed for the day. I stayed a bit at La Pensée sauvage, an independent bookstore with a poem dispenser. I loved the idea.
They also had a whole display of books about bookstores (librairies) and libraries (bibliothèques). I was taken aback by the number of books about books. Let’s see the ones I saw and the ones I knew about. Books as remedies to soul searching and various pains.
Bookshops and libraries seem to inspire writers from different countries and different genres. In my impromptu sample, we have books from Japan, France, Italy, Sweden, the USA and the UK. There are also several genres: magic realism, romance, feel-good books, cozy mysteries, and chick lit.
They use bookshops as places to keep your dreams alive or as to fight against loneliness thanks to books and like-minded people. Apparently, cats and books are an item, if we look at the covers of these books. According to the French book titles, bookstores are comforting and hopeful places. See the Second Chance Bookshop or the Bookstore of Buried Dreams.
And we have Jenny Colgan who is on a roll with her Happy Days Charming Bookstore, Christmas Charming Bookstore and, my favorite, the Charming Bookstore by the Tranquil Waters. These are not the original English titles but the literal translation of the corny French ones.
Bookstores and their content are also healing places, according these three books. The middle one has a play-on-word on the expression aux grands maux, les grands remèdes, (The English equivalent is Desperate times, desperate measures) and on the words mots (words) and maux (troubles), same pronounciation, different meaning. The expression is changed into something implying that words have healing powers.
Blue and pale pink seem to be the go-to colors for these books, btw.
Bookstores are lovely place but don’t forget libraries! They also are magic places who help readers heal and find themselves. Midnight Library, Library of Broken Hearts, Library of Secret Dreams.
I wonder where this trend stems from. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, we all need comfort books from time to time. However, if going to a bookstore or a library as a reader is a wonderful and appeasing experience, I don’t think that running a bookshop or a library is a cake walk. Even if these bookstores include a coffee shop and serve cake too!
Lots of independant bookstores are struggling financially and their owners work really hard to remain open. And think about the irony: I bet that most of these books featuring quaint independent bookstores are bought online or at chain bookstores!
And what about you? Have you read any of these books and what do you think of this books-about-books trend? I’m not immune to it. I acquired La Librairie de la Place aux Herbes by Eric de Kermel, the only one highly recommended by the libraire. It does sound corny but I decided to trust the libraire at La Pensée sauvage, owner of the poem dispenser.
Then I came back to my senses and got two historical crime fiction books, one by Anne Villemin-Sicherman and one by Laurent Joffrin
La Nuit de la sage-femme is set in Metz and L’Enigme du Code noir involves something about the Code noir, the awful legal code written by Colbert in the 17th century to organize slavery in Louisiana. To think it was considered as a positive development at the time…I hope they’ll be good, I trust the publishers on these ones.
Let’s end this billet with a few pictures of Metz, a beautiful city in the North East of France.
How lovely! I have read the Morisaki Bookshop out of those and I need to find the Jenny Colgans as I like her books.
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I heard the Morisaki Bookshop was a nice read. Did you enjoy it?
Happy reading with the Colgans!
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I did, yes, it was sweet but full of community and different kinds of family, and books/reading of course!
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Thanks, this could be a good Beach & Public Transports book!
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I don’t know any of those books but I can relate to the pleasure of just wandering around in a place that’s hosting a literary festival. In a world where, truth be told, people don’t read books much at all, it is nice to be with people who do.
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I totally agree with you: just wandering in the festival “grande librairie” with other readers is a great feeling. It’s great to chat with the libraires and also with other readers who are browsing through books.
At Quais du Polar, I got Lonesome Dove a new reader! 🙂
And the crowd is calm and respectful.
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Thank you for taking up with you on this observational tour of the Metz book festival.
I do think there is a trend for bookshop lit, which has less to do with the experience of running a business and more to do with alluring readers towards that good feeling they get in entering a bookstore or library. But it’s clearly taking off judging by how many you saw here. I did read one a while ago, a Swedish translation, I don’t recall the name but if I put bookstore in the Goodreads search box, it comes up with over 5000 titles.
What a wonderful poem vending machine, that looks like an interesting plot device in itself!
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I agree, this trend is all about the soothing feeling of libraries and bookshop. It’s probably the quietness of these places that gets to us. People are calm, collected and there’s no agressive music blasting through loudspeakers. (Clothes stores are a nightmare for that)
I know the feeling, I love to bask in it. But still, the irony of this books remains: so many indie bookstores struggle and disappear (less in France than in other countries, thanks to the fixed price for books) because readers buy their books elsewhere.
It’s great to love books about books but it’d be greater to practise what you preach when reading these books and support indie bookstores if you can afford it.
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We gotta get to Metz some time. Maybe next year. A great pleasure to read your dispatch.
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The area is worth visiting and Metz is a beautiful city. Let me knowif you decide to go, I’ll give you tips!
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I am 88 now and find it difficult to visit bookstores. I « read » by listening to books borrowed from the library. I very much enjoy your column and hope young Americans are learning to read in French and other languages.
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88 and reading billets and commenting on blogs, that’s wonderful! Thanks for reading my billets, I really appreciate it.
I guess that young Americans who learn another language probably choose Spanish but I hope a few of them choose French. It’s such a treat to be able to read and speak in another language. I’m happy it allows me to discuss books with people from all over the world.
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I’ve been reading the Morisaki Bookshop for weeks as a “directly before bed” book, just a page or two, now and then (most of my reading is rather grim, and most of that reading is done before dark, because I often have nightmares inspired by my reading/viewing/listening) and it’s a sweet story. It would make a good transit read, I would think. I have Michiko Aoyama’s book sitting beneath it, based on a recommendation from the same reading friend. But, normally, I find fictional books about books to be a little disappointing; they’re not enough about books somehow, or they seem too superificial to me. The poetry dispenser sounds like great fun! And I agree, for those who can afford to buy books to begin with, I think it’s essential to support the indies and to support bricks-and-mortar shops if one likes browsing (rather than being “that person” who goes to the indie shop, writes down the titles they want, or gets recommendations from staff, and then buys online from the corporations instead).
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Thanks for the intel on the Morisako books. It’s nice to have sweet books from time to time and especially between grims ones.
These books are reads but good ones aren’t easy to write, I think.
In France, with the fixed price for books, there’s no point checking out books in a brick-and-mortar shop and then buying them online. There are signs to remind people about it and it’s the best way to protect indie bookstores.
So far, no one has suggested to change this law. Fingers crossed.
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Oh, yes, book prices are fixed in North America too; hard printed on the books themselves. But online booksellers offer discounts (and writers’ contracts have clauses in them that reduce the amount of royalties paid when a book is deeply discounted, say 30%, which directly impacts writers’ incomes) to get around that. So people who go into proper stores, that employ local people, and make their lists and simply go home and order from Ama*on, and they personally benefit from those savings without considering the impact on indie publishers and writers and the book industry in general (which affects all of us as readers). I wish more people were as committed to supporting small presses and literary events/culture as you are!
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The difference is that here, the price is fixed AND you cannot discount more that 5% off the price. And you’re not allowed to do free deliveries.
So, if you see a book in a bookstore, it’s useless to hope for a better price online. You might as well buy it right away.
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Ahhh, thank you for explaining. I knew the pricing part was similar but I didn’t understand what exactly was different. So, what do the behemoths do, then? Do they simply sell everything at 5% off as a matter of course? Like you, I wouldn’t think that’s enough to worry about.
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