Like a paving stone on a walk at night–no, more like a book left down on the floor where you were reading it while trying to stretch the pain from your back so you could sleep–I stumbled upon a book shop in Derbyshire the other day. I have never much been to Derbyshire, having missed those roads as I drove through England back in 1978. This particular bookshop was there at that time but in no better shape than my own little effort in Boston, right down to trying to survive by selling textbooks on the side. No, I stumbled upon Scarthin books in Cromford because I spend too much time on the internet these days. I was researching what others considered to be the best bookshops.

It’s all very disappointing to a glass-half-empty sort like myself. So many people who love books and want to work for themselves try to start book shops and fail most often by losing sight of what it is they love. I did, and I know the impulses. I failed repeatedly. But I am a stubborn guy. And then I had more success than most and I loved 90% of every minute of it and wish I were still in that war, but I am not and that is that. But, as I recall the many hundreds of bookshops I have physically explored over the years, and now consider the pale presence on the internet of those who remain as I dawdle through the ether, I am struck more severely by my own failure to accomplish in the end what was in my mind at the time.

This is all for a creative purpose. I do succumb to self-pity now and again, but I keep busy enough to avoid it generally and I have just been re-writing the third book in the HOUND series and there is a development in the plot which I don’t want to go into just now which makes me reconsider my own deeds and re-judge the values I placed or misplaced on things. And thus I found Sean Dodson’s article on the ten best bookshops in the world (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jan/11/bestukbookshops). And there I found Scarthin Books.

Now, you understand that I am judging this place from afar. But that is part of the point.

What I found amidst a list of profligate booksellers who seem to be rapt by there own appearances or terribly over-financed, or perhaps just extremely lucky in the lottery of life, is a bookseller who appears to have had and still has much the same motivation as myself. This is something of a shock. I like to think I am so unique. After all, it is one of the identification points of my generation. I disparage others who think they are special, but secretly (or not so secretly) think that way of myself.

Of all the book joints in all the towns in all the world, I think I would like to walk into the Scarthin. How do I know? Well, I’ve spent a couple of hours on their web site. I see the kind of books they sell. I have read what they have to say. There’s a swell piece on ‘the ecology of books.’ Another on the British weather. Another on ‘Cistercian Cricket.’ These are all under the heading ‘Whimseys’ along with a ballad I love. There’s more under ‘Conceits.’ By the time I got to ‘Dave’s Diatribes’ I was thinking I might have lost a brother in some parallel universe. I don’t have to agree with every nick or nonce (there is a bit on ‘health and healing’ and another on ‘shamanism’ that gave me pause…but then I have many lovely relatives who are Catholics and worse) and I can say that I feel like I could have comfortably spent my thirty years there instead of the old Avenue Victor Hugo. And this makes me re-think what I have rethought time and again, but with a keener edge.

Bookselling is a profession, like doctoring and lawyering. You don’t have to agree with the law to understand the necessity of it and the need of good counsel. A doctor needn’t make a living off of botox and sugar pills. A bookseller can be catholic without being Catholic. What is important to making a profession worthwhile is the investment of your own being in the effort. If you do it for the money you’re both a fool and an idiot. You live such a brief time, how could you waste it shuffling paper on a desk to fill the maw of some bureaucracy instead of kicking at the leaves on a walk in the woods?

If you’d been in as many of the homes of the wealthy as I have you’d appreciate the judgment. Most of them are as stupid as the rest of us and they live in constant fear of being discovered. They are very defensive about their money because they haven’t a clue how it came to be in their pockets. Trust funds and tax breaks do not give them confidence in their worth. (Thinking of Britain now—that is the great trick of the class system there. They have fashioned a duty out of their position which saves them the angst.)

When you buy a library from someone who has had the means and the time to enjoy the best literature our culture has to offer, and you find leather bound tomes which have never been read and Danielle Steel paperbacks with their spines curled you know where you are, just as you know when a bookseller is a biz-niz person or a professional by what they purvey. (I re-spell business to keep it apart from what can be an honorable craft).

As I have said elsewhere, booksellers are as responsible for the demise of bookselling as anyone. You cannot treat books as accounting tricks and keep your principles anymore than you can handle crap without getting the stink on your fingers. You cannot lose a little integrity on every sale but make it up in volume. It’s fine to sell a bestseller, but if that’s what you are in business for, you’ve made a mistake. The margins are terrible and the third rung of hell is just ahead.

I want to believe that this place is what I have taken it to be, sight unseen. Like an internet love affair. There is something invigorating about wishful thinking. It’s so easy not to do. Why be disappointed? Accept your lot. It’s more convenient to accept what you have or are told you must have instead of what you want. It’s one of the few graces of my self-centered generation that we want so much. It moves us. Often to extremes or poor choices, but it moves us. What won me to the Scarthin from the first was the sub-head to the home page: “Britain’s most enjoyable Bookshop.” My god, these folk are nearly American! Who else places joy (re happiness) in the casus belli of their founding document.

I imagine the good people of the Scarthin might be unhappy with this last assessment. They must forgive me my own prejudices.

I am now saving my pennies and have set my sights across my compass to the east. I will find a bed at the Town Head Farmhouse or some such in Cromford some day sooner than later and visit a bookshop in that neighborhood.