Was watching ‘Before Sunset’ the other day. If you’re trying to preserve your fading memories of one and only Paris vacation (like i’m trying to do), that would be the movie to watch. That is, if you don’t count National Lampoon’s European Vacation, which I ALSO watched (that’s how sad I’ve become).
In the opening scene of that movie, Ethan Hawke is giving a press conference in Shakespeare and Company, that iconic English bookstore in Paris (which, sadly, I did not have a chance to visit). But even so, that bookstore captured the essence of what an old bookstore should look like – big, dark and musty, teak shelves, old books and quiet like a graveyard. I know we are almost too used Malaysian MPH/Kinokuniya’s style of modern, bright and spacious stores (and screaming kids running around), which is all well and good if you want to pick up Joey Yap’s latest almanac or something by Tom Clancy.
But its those old bookstores that i like. Just like the ones in Charing Cross in London. And like the old Skoob Books in Brickfields. Sadly, though I’ve only been to the old Skoob Books once. Ah yes, i remember the occasion. I wanted to get a book for my then girlfriend’s birthday, so i went down with David (i didn’t know the place and he did) by the minibus no.12 (SS2 to Bukit Bintang via Brickfields for 50sen). Browsing the books I found an old copy of Agatha Christie’s An Affair At Styles (what a nostalgic book!) which i bought for RM12.
Upstairs, where they had the reading area, I found an old chocolate truffle cookbook which i bought for my girlfriend. We ended off the morning by having lunch at the YMCA (Come on, everybody! “Its fun to stay at the Y… M….CA!”)
Sad to say, I have never returned to the bookstore since they moved.
When i was small, my hometown didn’t have any bookstores except those selling textbooks. Every December we’d go around to Pustaka Hussein or Ban Heng or Eng Bee to find those workbooks that our school made us buy to keep us distracted from getting smarter.
But once in awhile, if we were in Melaka, my dad would take me to Anthonian or Lim Brothers.
Those were the days.
(there’s an excellent pictorial essay of the old Lim Brothers here)