Bibliophiles ‘R Us

This last week, I’ve been making a couple of pilgrimages to bookshops and bookmarkets. First up was a day trip down to Maastricht, to the Dominicanen bookshop. This is notable for being in a converted church, and is probably the most beautiful bookshop in the Netherlands.

I confess that I didn’t actually buy anything there this time around, but it was worth it for the sightseeing, and the opportunity on the train journey to get stuck into Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s “The Angel’s Game”.

Next up was the trip last Sunday to the Hanseatic city of Deventer for the annual Bookmarket – the biggest one in Europe with 6 kilometers of bookstalls. Despite the pouring rain, I came away with some success: an armful of books including a first edition hardcover of Spider Robinson’s “Callahan’s Lady” and Anton Radevsky’s pop-up book on Spacecraft.

I have a small collection of pop-up books – I’m fascinated by paper engineering. But it’s nothing when compared to the collection of someone like Kees Keijzer. He was mentioned in the Volkskrant’s report on the bookmarket. Apparently, he has a collection of 2,500 pop-up books. That’s more than my complete library, for heaven’s sake.