Librarian's Nightmare
Ian
There is no Dewey Decimal System in place here. Ian and Eddie have their own system: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find"
Voltaire & Rousseau sits in a nook of Glasgow where the cobblestones have yet to be paved over, and as such its purveyors aren't in much of a hurry. The place has been peddling second-hand books since 1975, drawing mostly from estate sales and auctions where Eddie applies a weathered eye to forgotten collections, seeking out the rare and bygone. Just last week he found a supposedly extinct manifesto on Socialism, written by a British politician who later became a fascist and attempted to burn all the copies. "I rather like the looking", he says.
There are sections of course: Fiction, Art History, the Classics, Philosophy. Each has its shelf, corner or cascade and occasionally a tower or two will collapse and unearth a section of works long hidden. BB, the local cat, is usually responsible for these excavations.
For all the words on the walls, few are spoken inside Voltaire's. Patrons seem to adopt the reverie of the place, if only for a minute forgetting the paved world around the corner. In this customer's humble opinion, this aimlessness is the magic. That, along with Ian and Eddie's peculiar demeanor. When asked his favorite book, in a moment up for Most Ironic of the Year, Ian replies in an unmistakable brogue, "Aye, I don't read much to be honest, just doesn't strike me fancy"
Eddie