Road Trip Wednesday: if I could build my own personal paradise (bookstore)

This is in response to this topic posted on YA Highway, a YA writing and publishing blog that I follow obsessively.

from here, by Lori Nix

If I had a bookstore, it would be one of those tiny hidden away ones in a city that you stumbling across trying to get out of the rain. Like Daunt in London, which is in a lovely old house and I think I could live there. There would be big windows, and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and window seats in which to read. There would be one of those balcony second floors with the spindly railings tooled in flowers and thorns and tiny towns of people waiting for an adventure. There would be a spiral stair case. The history section would have leather worn leather chairs and the YA section would have pillows tucked into the corners, or maybe there would be no sections at all. All of the floorboards would creak and it would smell like paper and ink and warmth.

I would sell every kind of book I could get my hands on. Old expensive ones with fading print and paper backs with soft covers and the brand new first-print ones with slick pages. There would be too many to put on the shelves and they'd have to be stacked.

There would be a lot of stools. No, no stools, those ladders on rails that slide back and forth. There would also be tea and occasionally cookies and hot chocolate and bookmarks with ribbon tied to the end and messenger bags. Perhaps I would have a box of steampunk goggles under the counter.

I would wear knit hats and sit on a stool behind the counter and drink tea out of a painted mug and read books. There would be paper cranes hung from the ceiling. Sometimes I would play music and sometimes it would be so quiet you could hear the rustle of the pages and your own heartbeat.

I would probably call it Bookend or the Inkworld or something equally book-related. "12 Grimmauld Place" has a nice ring to it.

It would be glorious. I think I may just have to build it.