You know the feeling you get when you open a book and, right from the first sentence, it draws you in? From those first few words, you know you are going to love it and read it again and again, because it feels like you’ve come home.
Every little girl is unhappy in her own way and I was too, deeply so.
I was sitting on my terrace, poised to enjoy the afternoon sun for a while before my friend arrived for the weekend, when I opened Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop by Alba Donati. For the next hour, I sat quietly turning the pages, sipping my first Aperol Spritz of the summer (I don’t care if they’re not trendy anymore, they’re delicious and I love them), hoping that a freak traffic jam would lengthen her journey so that I could keep reading.
The more I read, the more I wanted to visit the bookshop in Lucignana. I wanted to meet Alba Donati and talk about our favourite authors and see what she would recommend for me. I wanted to buy a stack of books and read them in the Adirondack chairs in the garden. I wanted to meet the people she mentions in her book: Laura, Donatella, Alessandra and all the others. Her bookshop also has peonies in the garden. Peonies are my favourites.
More than anything, I wanted to open my own bookshop and see where my weekend project could take me. I wanted notebooks, calendars and to find out when the book-themed stickers I ordered from New Zealand would arrive. It felt like there were people out there who understood, who wanted the same things I did and that maybe, I might just be able to find the courage to throw open the doors and open my shop, and maybe even make it a success.
Why do I want to open a bookshop? For many of the same reasons Alba Donati did. Although I cried at fourteen because they shot Enjolras off the barricade.
But finding a book that feels like home, like family, is like forging a connection across time and space. And when the book you find isn’t even fiction, it’s even more amazing.
The Story Cellar 