Books from Timbuctoo

There are only a few things in the world I love. I'm passionate about a lot of things, but I only love a few. Now, I have this peculiar trait so common, yet often unacknowledged in human beings, that I can love certain items. I love my 10 year old Success agenda. I´ve seen a number of nicer ones and after 10 years, I'm finally able to buy one if I wanted to. But the feeling of betrayal, that twang that is being played on my heartstrings every time I touch the smooth leather of my black, simple, wonderful calendar when I think of throwing it away, that feeling keeps me clutching my lovely black anachronistic bundle of leaflets. I almost cried when I had to throw away my old Sony-Ericsson P1i, the most wonderful phone I've ever owned, a miracle machine that could do everything an iPhone could do, 2 years before that Californian marvel was released. It's a physical sensation, not a purely emotional one, and I acknowledge my silliness.

There is, however, one area of all things material that can never be filled enough. One thing in this world that I love, with my whole heart, a passion, a burning fever that will not be quenched by water nor earth nor larger flame. This thing, is the book. It does not matter what book, although I have my favourites. And just so there are many men that would rather put their greasy palms on the well tanned breasts of a young and supple brunette, where another´s eye is caught by the curvature of a blonde's firm hindquarters, so am I always lured to the orange spines of old Penguin pockets. I am that strange man that you'll see in those small bookshops that are stacked to the rafters with books on every obscure literary genre known to man, who is smelling the inside of the books. You know these stores. Usually the tops of the bookcases are filled with crates in which more books reside. Hallways filled with books go on and on until finally you find the owner and he knows exactly what you need right now. Mind you, not what you want, because knowing what you want is easy. No, the owners of these temples know what you need, and you could have found it yourself if only you didn't turn left at that stack of homo-erotic Sumerian verses that you briefly flipped through because the woodcut prints were so beautiful. Groningen used to have one of these wonderful shrines to Saraswati, and it was located right behind my faculty.

Now, I have a system to my bookcases. There is one dedicated to pulp, I'm not ashamed to admit that I like a good romp through an imaginary kingdom filled with dragons and the like as much as the next man. The other bookcase is filled with every book that I feel deserves my devotion and the special attention that comes with said devotion. Half of the books in the latter bookcase, if not more, come from Timbuctoo and Timbuctoo is closing come March.

I was the first person in my group of friends to own a smartphone. I've tried a number of obscure Operating Systems. I'm always happy to try out a new social-media experiment. Back in the day when Jack Endino still had his own strange mailing-list, I was on it and me and my friends would order stuff from Sub Pop, that was located an ocean and a continent away from us. My e-bay account is from 2003, my Amazon account from 2001 and before that I had a CDNOW account. My poor mother didn't understand a word of the rants I uttered in 2000 when I had to download special software with 5 kb/s because Sony had protected its CDs against ripping. The word 'Twilight' has a special place in my heart, not because of sparkly vampires that have womb destructing semen, but because I was part of this special bit of culture in the nineties that spread CDs with that title amongst friends. I never knew where they came from and making a copy cost 3 hours on your 4x CD burner. Be this as it may, I do not own an e-reader, I do not want one and I do not a kindle/nook/ebook app on my hardware. If there was a way for me to carry around 1000 books, I would be thrilled at the thought of a portable library and my testi are already shrinking at the thought of something soulless and electronic.

I am a rare and dying breed. Timbuctoo is a casualty of a world in which everything is within reach of your mouse. Amazon has cheap books, selling for 1 cent and why bother to pay more? But as I stood in my favourite little temple, I thought about the conversations I've had with the man who owns it. I do not even know his name, and neither does he mine. Yet he knows what I read. I'm always amazed by the things he has recommended me. I love 'The Sheltering Sky', which he recommended me, even though he thinks the prose is lacking in style. Deflowered of any elegance. When I started my studies in law, but did not want to go to classes, I went there. Nobody cared how much I browsed and read, discussions on illustrations, lettering, fonts, print, prose, reputations, literary scandals went on for as long as you wanted. The knowledge given to me in that small store has formed me to a much larger extent then the University could ever do.

Amazon is wonderful. I am continuously amazed at its power in guessing what I want. It is fast, cheap and the service when something goes wrong is excellent. But my weekly e-mail with recommendations doesn´t give me a discussion. The lovely Bangalore woman does not care about how much I loved the book that Amazon recommended me. Sure, I dutifully post my finished read on Goodreads, it links to Facebook and maybe somebody 'likes' it. But to me, reading is so much more, and it can not be shared through easy-to-click means. Effort needs to be done to convey your experiences, and when this effort is shared with a fellow reader, what follows is pure magic. Every time I've entered Timbuctoo, I've had this experience, and from March, it will be gone.