Kenny Ruse My Bookstore Adventure
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Kenny Ruse
My Bookstore Adventure
Words: 2,248
As I walk into the building fixated solely on the education and pleasure of the ones who drink in all of its knowledge, I begin to wonder where my adventure through the labyrinth shelves filled with paper and ink will take me. This labyrinth is more than just paper and ink but is made of knowledge and concepts that may take days to find the solutions for. I begin to wander around aimlessly thinking that those who take the challenge of this arena, and have no idea what their goal is, would easily become overwhelmed as I am. They act like a small child with attention deficit disorder in the middle of a construction site trying to stay focused on one thing. Those who do have a goal and know their way through the maze are like the construction workers watching the child. Trying to find the wall that suits my interest, I begin to look at the environment I find myself in.
All around me is a large diversity of books. There are some with vast amounts of topics ranging from fictional worlds to the very intricate aspects of cultures from our own world. I find it difficult to imagine that all the books in this giant hall will be read or bought. I wonder at the different minds that have placed themselves into the same position I put myself in. I look up towards the high ceiling, discerning the sections of the store: fiction, non-fiction, children, mystery, romance, travel guides, education, music and a coffee shop. Feeling parched, I follow a path to the coffee shop. On my way, I search for a book that would pique my interest. My head seems to swivel as I glance at the thousands of titles cast in front of my curious eyes. I finally come across a book that I may enjoy, titled Jazz Through the Ages. I lift the book off of its wooden holder and carry it with me on my way to the coffee shop in the very back of building. I reach the coffee shop, and buy myself something to drink before sitting down to enjoy my discovery. The book has different chapters that coincide with the various types of jazz and the famous musicians, like a timeline of the genre of music. I flip through the pages, looking for something that I could relate to. I search the chapter titles and study the pictures, waiting for something to jump out at me. Finally I find the section titled “Gerry Mulligan” and I begin to bury myself in the knowledge. Gerry Mulligan was a baritone sax player, like I am, and he was famous for working with Miles Davis. I keep flipping through the pages, but make a mental note to look up some songs that he played on, so that I can learn from him.
I finished my coffee, and I start looking at the people near me in the little Starbucks café. One man across from me catches my attention. This man is surrounded with stacks of books. My first thought is that he must be a professor or a teacher, because hes wearing nice clothes, as opposed to the casual t-shirt and jeans that most of the rest of the shoppers are wearing. I think that he might have been researching something for a class, because every few seconds he would take vigorous notes in his notebook. Finally, my curiosity got the best of me, so I walked over to him to introduce myself. I asked him why he surrounded himself with such high piles of books. He laughs and says that he is a student at the university studying English literature. He had to read all of these books so that he could write his final research paper on the difference between British and American authors. I looked at the authors in the piles and saw Hemingway, Twain, Dickens, Scott and Doyle. I wished him luck with his paper, and walked away thinking that I wasnt looking forward to having to read so many books for one paper. I wonder if he thinks the same way about having to memorize music, which is what I will be doing for finals. I look around for another individual that I can get to know.
By just looking between the aisles, I think it is funny how the people in each section seem to reflect the genre that they are browsing. In the section marked “Romance,” I notice that only women occupy the aisle. Is it only women that feel compassion for the characters in a romance novel? To find an answer to this question, I searched through the titles of the books to find something worth reading. I go through the aisle looking, constantly being watched by the women that are also looking. Near the end of the section, I decide to just pick up a book and begin to read. I didnt write down the title, but it was written by Danielle Steele. I recognized the name, because my mom and sister are always reading her books. The beginning bored me and I do not understand how anyone could get enjoyment from these stories. I must not be one of the men who enjoy romance novels but I do know that there are at least two men that enjoy them, because they were entering the aisle as I walked away.
Childrens books were the next section I came across. I look at the selection of books and realize that some of them were once read to me and they are still popular with families today. I was surprised to find that some of them, like The Monster at the End of This Book, had two or three different editions and some even had sequels. I was curious about them, so I grabbed three different versions of Where the Wild Things Are. The first was the original that I remember from my childhood, with the simple drawings of Max and the monsters. The second one was a pop-up book, where the monsters jumped off of the page. I would have really loved that one as a child. The third version had pictures from the movie made in 2009. It wasnt quite the same as the others, because the movie pictures made it seem too realistic. The simple drawings in the original were easier for my imagination to work with.
The next section I find myself in is the section titled “Mystery.” There were a few books, like the ones with the Hardy Brothers and Nancy Drew, that I had heard of before, but I also found the collection of Sherlock Homes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Ive never read these stories, but my brother really