Since now I happened to be stuck in Zagreb, yesterday I did something really nice and visited famous book market called "Inteliber".
Usually I don't find my hometown very exciting - yes , it is the biggest city in Croatia and looks little bit like smaller relative of Prague,but honestly it seems to me that only people from province find Zagreb beautiful of interesting,if they never saw anything else. Everything is nice if you have no idea about comparison. I've been lucky to travel and live abroad for more than a decade now,so Zagreb is just boring in-between spot for me. However, mention the word "books" and I'd go in the minefields, so naturally I had to see "Interliber".
And I was - thrilled!
It happened to be huge book fair where every single publisher and bookshop under the sun had its own stand (even second-hand bookshops) and people browsed for hours in fact this happened for days so weekend days were particularly busy. I did not see anything interesting between new published titles and translations - yes,I am spoiled with originals I see in bookshops all over the world - but was very intrigued with stalls where second-hand bookshops offered their goodies. I recognized many of the titles published some 30-40 years ago and thought how much crap I have read back than, of course when you are very young everything looks interesting. Could not find some of the old titles that popped in my head (and honestly,there were so many stalls that I became tired searching trough them) but bought two books by Erich Von Däniken that I remember from my childhood - much later at home I realized they are really old-fashioned now and other,newer authors write much better now but they all followed Däniken's steps. I also noticed that many of book sellers are bored and not specially enthusiastic towards potential customers but this is my own professional point of view since I work in retail. However, it was wonderful to be surrounded with thousands and books and see lot of people browsing - at least my fellow citizens are not complete disaster. Than you realize they all go for cheapest editions of cookbooks, astrology and self-help editions (seriously, I saw a title "Stop aging - now!") but still,never mind,I hope they also stumbled upon something better.
I was happy as a piglet roaming around all those book stalls and suddenly remembered that long ago,in my childhood, I had a desire to work in a library or bookshop. Of course life took me the other way,or it just turned exactly how it was supposed to happen,who knows - in any case I was book lover from the start (I read at the age of four) and this is something that never changed and probably never will. You are either book lover or you are not.
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