Heaven

I like to keep my promises. I'm terribly bad at it, but I do like to. So, here is heaven:

It is a bookshop called El Péndulo in Mexico City. I suppose a trendy sort of bookshop, with a cafe and restaurant, concerts and open poetry nights, CDs and DVDs with an emphasis on world cinema and unusual choices, and lots of big glossy books of photography and art. And best of all there is a whole stand of books in English, with a fantastic, intelligent, interesting selection of the kind you only ever get in independent bookshops and the best I've seen in Mexico by miles: Charles Bukowski, Neil Gaiman, Noam Chomsky, Jane Austen, Susan Sontag...

I knew I loved the place when almost the first thing I saw was a shaft of sunlight hitting the bright pink cover of this fabulous edition of HG Wells, illustrated by Edward Gorey:

Closely followed by Harry Potter in Welsh, of which I simply cannot imagine the future buyer:


But possibly my favourite discovery was this one - so, so beautifully obscure and intellectually geeky:

I haven't felt that bookshop feeling in a while - tingly excitement at all the lovely books, combined with a profound anxiety at how little time there is to read them - but I did with a vengeance. I picked out an English translation of The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz (having previously, rather to optimistically, bought it in Spanish), a history of Mexico (better late than never to do something about my blinding ignorance), and a book of amazing photographs of ordinary Mexicans from the infamous Tepito neighbourhood of the City, which I realised I'd seen the exhibition of with the lovely Josie last year. I've had a bit of a thing about books of photos recently, and now have a lovely shiny pile of them. Predictably, I have looked at all the pictures and not read any of the serious non-fiction books that make up the adjacent pile.

But the bookshop was lovely. I looked at all the books, and then I went upstairs and got a cold chocolate and listened to the mellow music playing. And I thought about all the chores and useful things I could be doing in the city, and decided not to bother with any of them that day. And the next day I did almost nothing at all, just went with a few friends to a nearby town, the kind of place where Sunday afternoons are slow, and children sit on curbsides, and lovers hold hands, and families eat together with greasy fingers. We wandered about quiet streets, and looked at a little chapel full of jewel-coloured candles, and shared some food. Heaven.


On the theme of books, I bought myself a couple in Los Angeles airport on the way home - a tremendous and guilty pleasure since I am trying to restrict myself to serious non-fiction, which unfortunately tends to have the effect of stopping me reading anything much, and therefore making me miserable - and I recommend to you A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore. It is one of my favourite kinds of fiction, involving fantastical events happening in the ordinary world, gods and monsters and abstractions personified, crazy story logic, brilliant plotting and wordplay and jokes, and a general sense of the world being a mad and marvellous place, but with characters that you can care about and believe in, and an internal consistency and flow within the story - as practised I think by writers like Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams and Tom Robbins. A Dirty Job is about a guy who one day discovers he is Death, and it is really very good. There is the odd irritation and hole in the plot, but it made me happy when I was feeling like shit, it made me laugh, and I didn't stop reading til it was finished. Yum.

This, from page 71, is one of my favourite lines and made me snort in a busy departure lounge:

...staring at him accusingly, like she'd caught him feeding Froot Loops to her bête noire...

I will definitely be seeking out more Moore.

I also completely loved the cover art of the American edition, the strong colours and boldness of it, and that it just made me laugh.


Good cover art is important I think - I looked at the UK one on Amazon and it is similar in concept but in execution it is truly horrible. And the cover is a pleasing mix of glossy and matt (I am a little bit weird about the lovely smooth feeling of matt covers) and the paper it is made from is nicely soft and bendy and it simply made me very happy just holding it and ruffling though the pages. Just like we eat food partly with our eyes, I think we eat books partly with our hands. Or possibly I've just been a bit book deprived recently.

Also on planes I saw a couple of excellent films, Lars and the Real Girl, and Juno. Possibly everyone in the civilised world has seen both of these already, but if you haven't you should. I'm not sure you are supposed to suspend your disbelief in Juno, but I liked it a lot anyway. Juno reminded me a lot of Enid in Ghost World, being impossibly cool and quirky and full of brilliant wisecracks even at the most difficult times. I realised that when I watched Ghost World I couldn't help wishing I could be like Enid, and when I watched Juno I couldn't help wishing I could have been like Juno, which is a rather depressing reminder of all the time that is gone and will not come again.

Lars and the Real Girl is just a beautiful, oddball story beautifully and simply told: Lars falls in love with a doll he buys on the internet and treats her like she is a real person, forcing his family and community to do so too. I loved the various strong, smart female characters, I loved the concept of a person who isn't a person at the centre of the film, I found myself loving the outfits (it's set in far northern North America, so lots of woolly jumpers and tights and mittens) and really I just loved the whole thing.

Who wants to hide under the covers with me and read books and watch films til it all goes away?