All the Beauty in the World

“I learn not only to choke back any snobbish impulses I might have, but to dismiss them as stupid and absurd. None of us knows much of anything about this subject - the world and all its beauty.” —All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley

I feel this way about books, which of course are their own works of art, and working in a bookstore, which of course is not showcasing the best of all time, but only the best of right now. And of all time (we have a Classics section). We attempt to hold so much in one small space. 1,000 square feet vs the tens of thousands of square feet in the Met. It’s staggering. The amount of great words written, the art made across time. 

But this is what working in a bookstore has taught me, that the snobbishness I have felt toward books was holding me back in so many ways. Not just in what I could sell. But in what I could enjoy.

And so I have tried to develop a No Judgement Bookselling policy. We read for all different sorts of reasons and if a certain book brings a person joy, or educates them in some way, who am I to judge? What do I even know? What makes the books I like better than the books some other person likes? Nothing!