Lost in a good bookshop

Two months since I last posted! It's almost as if I've had nothing to talk about (how can you write sarcasm?) In the last nine weeks I've been north to Lille, where I discovered a canal that everyone seems to fall into and a French version of Welsh rarebit (God knows why); south to Marseilles and Aix-en-Pronvence, where I spotted the far from elusive cagolle and ran a half marathon with more ups and downs than a week's worth of Eastenders (well done on your first semi-marathon Elodie) and east to Duisburg, old German stamping ground and home to some of the finest examples of what people brought up pre-Facebook would call 'friends'. I've also been the star of a film student's video, beat a backgammon nemesis and oh yes, decided to leave Paris (not for discussion now).

This week, however, has been a little more arty. Music has featured strongly, with Tuesday's pilgrimage to Zenith to marvel at the longevity and get on down with the sheer rhinestone-studded cool of Texan blues-rock granddaddies ZZ Top. A lot less hip, the annual Fete de la Musique (or "how many times can somebody butcher U2?") on Friday saw the customers of Chez Gudule having the chance (or misfortune) to witness dancing a la Kad.

More sedate, though certainly not lacking charm, was the book signing at the Abbey Book Shop (29, Rue de la Parcheminerie, 5eme, home of the Canadian Club). The apartment opposite is allegedly home of French movie siren Isabelle Adjani, but we weren't here to spot celebrities. Perennial maitresse de la culture, Elodie, had invited me along to this little gem of a literary corner in the Marais to hear extracts from the book "Je t'aime, me neither", a tale of romantic adventure and misadventure in the City of Light, by her friend and self published Canadian author April Lily Heise. Though Lily herself was brilliantly bubbly - as was the free flowing champagne - and there was the occasional opportunity to meet the odd literary celeb (among them "A Year in the Merde" author Stephen Clarke, though not the fabled Adjani) the real star was the librairie itself.

A warm, Canadian welcome at the Abbey

Genius minus the gimmicks:give me this over Waterstone's anytime!

                                 
Set up in 1989 by amiable Canadian expat Brian Spence and squirrelled away in a cobbled alleyway, barely four people across, the Abbey is everything you'd want a little, old bookshop to be. In a kind of literary Tardis, warm, wooden shelves stretched for miles, literally piled from floorboards to rafters with fact and fiction, poetry, plays and prose (see photos). Forget a few hours, I could have lost myself for days in there, amongst the teetering towers and criss-crossing corridors, there was even a cellar for everything they couldn't fit upstairs.

As I left, clutching my signed copy of Je t'aime (for a friend!) and a novel in verse on the possible post-mortem exploits of Christopher Marlowe, I couldn't help wondering if Carlos Ruiz Zafon had found inspiration in the Abbey for his mythical "Cemetery of Lost Books" and if Isabelle Adjani actually knew how good a bookshop she had across the road.

Links:

The Abbey's Facebook page (I had too!):
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Abbey-Bookshop/19922251361

Lily's book and blog:
http://jetaimemeneither.com/about/