Young Man on Train Reading Simone Weil

The book, a paperback edition of Simone Weil’s The Need for Roots, was cradled by the young man in the palms of his hands. He sat with dignity, his formal countenance and delicate presence transcended the mediocrity of his surroundings. At first glance it seemed he was simply holding a closed book with his head bowed … Read more

A Bookshop on St. Catherine Street

Every weekday morning, as I walk my two children to kindergarten, we pass a bookshop. The bookshop is a small independent establishment that sells new, mainly paperback books. The neighbourhood is scruffy verging on run-down, but the bookshop’s location must be the envy of many a potential bookseller…

The bookshop was like a vessel that carried me down literature’s great road…

…back to my youth when I began to realise that reading was not just something you did to gain knowledge, it was a profound devotional act, a reaching to the mystical beyond. As a teenager, gazing into my local bookshop on cold windswept winter evenings became a sacred act. It gave me a rarefied feeling that I was standing on the threshold of revelation.