I'm glad I found it.

I stood on the sidewalk (called a footpath here) in front of the Hard to Find Bookshop and gazed up and over the flight of concrete steps that led to the open front door. I could tell even at that distance that this was a gem among book sellers. This building was formerly a convent. It's right across from St. Benedict's and it has a big cross over the entrance. I could see heavy dark wood trim just inside.  "Oh, I think I'm going to like it here."

I've told you before that I have always liked to explore 'neat, old buildings.'  Well, this one qualifies, as they say, in spades. And, unless you are new to my posts, you know that I also appreciate books. This neat old building is overflowing with them.  

There was a young woman at the desk just inside who greeted me and asked to take my trolley. "We don't allow any sorts of bags inside," she said. At first I assumed that it was to prevent theft, but after I entered the rooms and began exploring, I realized that it was also because they would be a nuisance to pull or carry through the narrow passages. Wearing a backpack would make it impossible for one to turn around in many places. It made sense to stash them for the duration.     

I published a post not long ago that I called Practically Perfect. It was about another bookstore I found over in Ponsonby. It was neat and orderly, and had a number of interconnecting rooms.  

I like this bookshop even better, despite the differences from Second Hand Bookshop. Whereas the latter was a model of tidiness, this one excels in managed disorder. And there are so many rooms, hallways, and nooks here. There are books absolutely everywhere. It would take a person weeks to look through them all. Unbelievably, I met and talked to an employee who was busily stuffing yet more books onto an alcove. 

And the smell. What would a used book store be without the smell? Second Hand Bookshop (The one in Ponsonby) pleased me with it's perfume. The emanation of this place grabbed my attention and shouted, "These rooms are old, these books come from every time and every place. You are privileged to walk among them."  

I wish you could smell this place. I wish you could shoulder your way with me through its passages. Have the opportunity to look around yourself and imagine all the years this building has been occupied, and the tens of thousand of authors who have contributed their efforts to it. 

The best I can do however is to show you some pictures. Better than a thousand words though, right? 

Let's start in the Chapel and look at it's ceiling. Not the Sistine of course, but nicely done.  

   And now let's continue wandering. 

I got carried away. I took dozens of pictures.  I won't show you all of them but hopefully just enough to give you the feeling of endless (well, seemingly) passages of books.  

There are some aisles that are just wide enough to fit through. I measured. My shoulders brushed both sides in some places.  

They even have books stashed beneath the stairs that go to the 2nd floor.

The employee I mentioned meeting earlier in this post was in this cubby hole beneath these stairs. He took a break from setting out new volumes and introduced me to 'Uncle Errol.'  Uncle is paper-mache I think and I was informed that he has a brother, of similar construction, in residence beneath some stairs in the Dunedin bookshop.  

After leaving Uncle, I headed toward the front door.  

There are two sets of stairs leading to the upper story.  I learned that the owner of the bookshops lives up there with his family.  What a place to call home.  I also found that between the stores in Auckland and Dunedin, they have 140,000 volumes available. (The Dunedin store is even larger than this one.) The company has online access to half a million.  

Perhaps it was the sign over a doorway, (in one of the pictures) that made me choose to buy, The Great Railway Bazaar, by Paul Theroux. He is an author I've enjoyed before. It cost just $8. or about $5.40 U.S. and is in excellent shape. 

I didn't have much time to browse today. I also wanted find and photograph a new mural that Jeanne had told me about (the subject of a future post) and I had to get back home by lunch time. But, I intend to return soon and do some serious browsing.  It may lead to a crick in my neck from reading the spines but that's a price I'll happily pay.    

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A further thought about bookstores...

One night recently, I woke up in the wee hours of the morning, and had a thought pop into my head as I lay there trying to get back to sleep.  I was thinking about the attraction that bookstores hold for me and others...One thought led to another...and another...

I finally got up, grabbed my robe and moved into my recliner in the living room. Might as well watch the night beyond the balcony evolve as I pondered...

In 1915, Albert Einstein proposed his General Theory of Relativity, which describes gravity, not as a force, but as a consequence of masses moving through curved spacetime, which is itself caused by an uneven distribution of mass in the universe.   

It occurred to me that there must be a fundamental law describing bookstores. I first thought about gravitational waves, which Albert suggested, and which have now been measured. Then, I realized that bookstores must be the source of another sort of wave that also travels through spacetime, and is proportional to the mass of the source of the waves.  

Einstein himself admitted that his theory was just a general one; that's why he very honestly  named it as he did. I think what he fell short on, and what is needed, is another theory, specific to bookstores. It might help make Albert's theory more complete. After a lot of serious thinking that night, I derived the following equation:  u=mt2.  

-U- is the urge to buy another book, -m- is the mass of the book, and -t- represents the amount of time which has elapsed since the purchase of the last book. This equation clearly shows that the urge varies by the square of the elapsed time. One can readily see then how the value of -U- could become enormous, given the passage of even modest units of time.  

I am not quite ready yet to publish my Specific Theory, as I have tentatively entitled it, but I think that Al's General Theory of Relativity will take a step closer to becoming the theory of everything once I do. 

Having completed my efforts, I went back to bed, scrunched up my pillow, and fell back to sleep, satisfied that I had advanced the world's understanding of physics. 

And I certainly needed my rest. The Nobel Prize is awarded each December 10th, and I have to get my paper done quickly if I want to beat the submission deadline.  

(To hedge my bets I plan to submit my paper to the Ig-Nobel Prize Committee as well. Somehow, I think I might have a better chance with them. ✈ )    -djf