Thursday, January 24, 2008

Pass Me My Monocle

Reading the new Monocle yesterday (yes I am a trust-fund wannabe) I came across an article on a Berlin bookshop called 25 Books. The shop only stocks 25 books at the one time, rotating the collection every couple of months. To say that I am in love with this idea would be an understatement. Faced with an overload of cultural product, be it books, cds or dvds, wouldn't it be great if someone had already hand picked the best from all over the world. Honestly, too much choice is a burden that we just don't have the time to deal with.

If I were to run a similar bookshop, you would not find the following things: anything by Dan Brown, little fucking gift books that people who don't have any soul buy, self-help books, how to get stains out of your carpet books, cook books by Australian cricketers, anything to do with how 'nice girls' don't get corner offices/promotions/rich, scrapbooking manuals, self help books (it needs to be repeated), Little Britain talking dolls, "James Patterson" novels (inverted commas because he doesn't actually write anything himself), books with movie tie in covers. You get the picture.

1 comment:

Mel said...

Yes yes this is all true, but only 25 books? This would surely be a tyranny of one person's taste. Unless they rotate the books really frequently.

Also (and this is purely pragmatic) I would be really intimidated to walk into such a bookshop. I enjoy the clutter of crap, it camouflages me from the judgement of others as I search for my own particularly shameful crap.

PS this is my new favourite blog, please explain this to Leith who is outraged that I have commented here.