A Romanian bookshop

Eastern Europeans have a bit more of a reputation for things cerebral than the rest of us, hence families of chess-players like the Polgar sisters and playwrights-turned-president like Vaclav Havel and universities that turn out doctors and engineers rather than graduates in film studies.

Three days ago I visited a Romanian bookshop in the western town of Timosoara, home of the Romanian counter-revolution, and with buildings that still bear the scars from Ceaucescu's tanks back in Christmas 1989.

The first two books I saw were a collection of the writings of Schopenhauer and a box-set of criticisms of Freud. Edging past those with some trepidation, I found a happy sprinkling of the modern stuff modern stuff (Steig Larsson for example), but a larger collection of classics, 19th and 20th century, some in Romanian, some in English. The shop held only perhaps 2000 titles, plus a cafe where you could presumably discuss the absurdity of life and shrug a lot, though sadly not while smoking. Almost every title was worth taking the time to read (though the winter nights in Romania would have to be both very long and very cold for me to pick up the Schopenhauer.) 

Compare with a chain bookstore in  England where you squeeze past a front table piled with 3-for 2  biographies of Colleen Rooney and waspish memoirs by out-of-luck politicians plunging their heads one last time in the feeding trough.   We are victims of publishers' bribery and hype. Romania teaches me that bookshops should filter for greatness. Among our local fare only the great Topping and Co of Ely comes close.