I love the feeling of walking into a bookstore, any bookstore. No matter where you are in the country or the world the books are still there, never changing, their hard bindings protecting the stories within. I love being surrounded by the life’s work of timeless authors, their histories just as much a part of the store as the words that they wrote. Hundreds and thousands of lifetimes all wait to be explored. Sometimes, I like to just walk the store, grab any book off the shelf and read a page picked at random. It doesn’t matter if I’ve read it before or if it is the first time I’ve seen it because I’ve made a connection, I’ve dipped into a moment of the life of a character, peeked at a sliver of someone else’s time. I revel in that moment, close the book, and move on. The character never stops, I merely caught it in passing. That’s what is great about being in a bookstore, it’s as if you are in the middle of a vast literary terminal with characters coming and going, bumping in to each other. Some share in experiences, others are stuck in completely different times and worlds. Historical events crash into fantasy and the real meet the figments of another author’s imagination. The best part is that I have the privilege of observing it all.