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There is no substitution for books; as old as human culture they are imbued with a magic that can not be totally understood in a thousand pages.

Books are universal. Among the loveliest things to see is somebody who is not a 'reader' be pulled into a great book. Something acknowledged and capitalised upon by the head of the investment firm with shares in WHSmith is the basic reality that no one on this Earth is immune to the charms of a bookshop and the power of a book when they have time on their hands and a book in their lap. Airports supply a distinct space where individuals, after their ritualistic breakfast with a pint, have time to kill and inevitably end up being drawn into the bookshop to select a title from the racks that will happen imbued with memories of their imminent vacation. In between the lines will be engraved the beaches, the sluggish early mornings on the terrace, the sundown walks around the harbour, and as soon as positioned upon their living-room bookshelf it will radiate Mediterranean permanently more.

Books are fantastic. They are a multi-sensory experience every step of the buying, reading, and displaying process, filled with memories, stories, and art, in far more ways than simply the words composed upon their pages. What the founder of the hedge fund that owns Waterstones offers the British public is a large and untappable well of understanding, among unthinkable magnitude that would be outright futility for any one person to try to conquer; there are a lot of books to read. Which is kind of what makes books and bookshops so special; the process of acquiring a book is as fundamentally personal as the act of reading it. Peaceful, reflective, and slow, walking into a bookshop is less about finding what you are trying to find and more about being drawn to what is currently there, awaiting you for what might have been aeons with the knowledge that your hands are those suggested for its pages.

Books are history. One hears plenty about 'brand-new book odor', but the genuinely wonderful fragrance is that of old tomes. Something that the CEO of the early investors in Amazon books understood was that used books hold an unique, inexpressible power. Shared between complete strangers, these travellers through time connect individuals across generations. Discovering a sixty-year-old book in your hands amounts a window into the past, where history connects to comprehend you and pull your mind into its pages, where one might find a corner folded down or a phrase highlighted by among the many souls that inhabit these lines together with you. Those marks are footprints, fossils of a moment's revelatory or touching experience, when among the vessel's individuals shown you all an extensive belief that simply could not go undetected, and time will bring that forward for as long as it can.