scenethrash asked:
Hi Mr. Gaiman! I’ve been seeing a lot of questions on as to why Aziraphale chose to put up a bookshop instead of a library, and I’m here to ask you a sort of the same question if you don’t mind…
Has Aziraphale ever thought of instead of putting up a bookshop, why can’t he just put all of his book collections and get a house? He would have more privacy + he wont have to deal with humans trying to buy his books. I mean, my sister lives in a house and she has TONS of books!
I think he’s incredibly proud of his bookshop.
Aziraphale’s bookshop is like many bookshops the world over, and if you know the type you’ll recognise it.
They’re run by (mostly)gentlemen who have reached that point in their lives where they have too many books, but no desire to part with them. However, since they are taking up too much room in the house, something must be done. And since they don’t just want to give them away (books? That they own?? Just giving them away???) they do the next best thing: they sort out the books that they like the least, and they bring them down to their newly-rented storefront and set them out haphazardly along shelves and on tables, for people to come in and ogle.
There’s no rhyme or reason to the organisation of books within these bookshops. In an ideal world, no one would buy these books and the seller could continue to enjoy them at their leisure. But since renting a storefront costs money, and it turns out running a shop is something of a full-time job, they inevitably succumb to the pressure and part with those most well-worn of their treasures for a sum, so that they can continue to indulge in their book-buying habit. Still, best not make it too easy for the customers.
So they hide away the till in a dark corner and do their best to hide behind their latest novel, and hope they can get away with a meagre sacrifice to the punters each month, without losing a treasured tome.
Aziraphale’s bookshop strikes me as this type. I’m sure he’s very proud that he’s not sold a single book in years, despite being in the centre of London. You could almost call it a miracle…
I love this, but I do also love the take I’ve seen, in particular in the Yelp reviews fic, where Aziraphale will gladly sell a book to someone who desperately needs it and will cherish it the way he has. The young genderqueer person who needs to know they’re not alone, the older woman who escaped into a beloved book but lost it so long ago she started to think she might have imagined it, the man who needs poetry to remember how to see the beauty in life.
(The fic I’m talking about: Reviews of AZ Fell and Co Antiquarian and Unusual Books, parts 1 and 2.)