Book Around the Corner

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.