The infamous bookstore in Paris, where Walter Berry purchased Joyce’s Ulysses.

Many introverts LOVE bookstores. There’s just something about the scent of old books, like coming home & smelling cookies in the oven. Instant relaxation. You know it will be quiet there, as there are plenty of books to use to deflect unwanted conversation, & nooks abound where you can tuck yourself in, losing yourself reading some pages.

When in England, whether in Cambridge, Oxford, or London, I always visit the bookstores. It’s a must, not a want. I can’t tell you how many boxes of volumes I’ve shipped back to the States, book-rate. It’s a compulsion, admittedly.

You can find charming bookshops like this in England, quite easily.

There are a number of used & rare bookshops in New Hampshire, which I frequent in search of first editions of authors’ books I love. Like volumes from Wharton, James, Jewett, Howells, Dickens, Housman, Sturgis, Canning, Cather, & Wilcox, to name a few. Yet, even in a Barnes & Noble’s, an indie bookstore (preferably), or a make-shift seller’s booth, I am drawn to the promise of new adventures found in old or used books.

Ladders among the stacks hold a certain charm. 

The more book clutter the better, when poking through old & rare bookstore stacks. A ladder is a bonus. It’s like an archaeological treasure trove when you come across those piles & piles of aging tomes. You search the bindings & covers, leather-bound editions with marbled papers & gilt edges, hoping to find the volume of all volumes.

The best bookstores have barely enough aisle width to let you through, the stacks of books tower so high. 

Old chairs, bean bags, benches–anywhere you can perch whilst you peruse pages, looking for the tell-tale signs of a rare edition. The frontispiece, the printer’s mark, the typeface numbering on an end page, the seller’s ad on the inside flap of a dustjacket. You learn to scan books for all the marks that confirm a treasure found. There’s an excitement that comes with the hunt, the mystery of what’s yet to be discovered. And, again… The scent. That perfect mixture of decaying paper & binding glue, a lovely kind of musty fragrance that soothes the introverted bibliophile.

Some bookstores set the mood with lighting, knowing finding a book is an intimate act. 

Introverts can lose themselves for hours, days, in a bookstore. All the senses engage in the experience. Whether outside or inside, a bookstore entices with the promise of something old & something new. Readers have a love affair with knowledge, a forbidden desire going back to the biblical apple. Heady with the scent of books, the supple feel of leather book bindings, the introvert may never want to leave.

Well, confessedly, I often don’t… for longer bouts of time than I’d like to acknowledge.