To Bookshop or Not to Bookshop

Isn’t it annoying when you have someone in your life who is trying to push you into living out your dreams, and just refuses to accept all your excuses about not having the time/money/courage etc

Actually, scrap all of that. I love it. Especially when they sent me a business plan out of the blue, including start-up costs and projected earnings. I know they asked Chat GPT to do it, but I love them for it just the same. I’ll admit, I teared up a little.

What is this dream of mine?

My own bookshop.

In a world that at the moment seems filled with ignorance and rage, opening a bookshop feels like lighting a candle in the darkness. A small one perhaps, but even the smallest candle sheds some light.

Why?

Because every book you read opens a door to a different world.

Every book you read lets you see the world just a little differently, if you are willing to open your mind to it.

Every book you read can grant you an escape, however fleeting.

Books have always been my friends. My strength. My dreams. There is nothing that would make me more proud than seeing something I had written standing proudly on the shelf in a bookstore. (Unless it was all of the above and then getting it banned in Florida.)

I see myself in a little second-hand bookshop, specialising in English books. Two reasons for that: they’re the ones I already have a stock of and there is already an enormous second-hand bookshop on the island, filled to the rafters with Danish books.

There will be cake. There will be wine. There will be everything I always wanted to do.

And to the friend pushing me to do it, deepest gratitude.

Because forgot the fears and the excuses, I am going to do it.

I guess I need to buy bookshelves.

And this is something I saw last summer in Catania. I think it would be perfect to showcase the newest editions to my shop. My mother is sure we can manage to paint a wine barrel of our own to look just like it. So I also need one of those. I’ll add that to the business plan.