Our bookstore buddy: Gertrud Selzer

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Bookseller interview

Our first bookstore-buddy we would like to present is Gertrud Selzer, owner of the bookstore Rote Zora in Merzig.

Gertrud, why did you choose to run a bookshop?

"Because reading has been an inspiration to me throughout my life. To this day, I still can’t imagine anything more satisfying than recommending books that match people’s needs and wishes. And the most satisfying thing is to discover writers of every kind and from all over the world. When I was child, I even worried sometimes that, at some point, I would have read everything. Nowadays I can only laugh at my younger self. Though perhaps that was precisely why I studied sinology and classical Chinese…"

Please describe the final few meters of the route you take in the mornings to your bookshop:

"After the first three quarters of an hour in a car, I walk past a butcher’s shop and cross by a busy crossing in the pedestrianised zone. A few more buildings, past five of our eight display windows and then I enter the shop. On Tuesday mornings, a stall is selling French bakery and cheeses immediately opposite our front door, and on Thursdays, there is the local farmers’ market. Our shop is in a detached building, which listed as historically important and is very centrally located in our small town."

Bookstore Rote Zora in Merzig

Throughout the day... when the shop door opens and someone steps inside....

"I look forward to meeting people, young and old, strangers or familiar faces, and talking about books – about life. Next to discussing literature, I enjoy chatting about politics, local or in the wider world, and about retail, the fixed book price agreement – or otherwise quite banal ordinary topics."

What wonderful thing is it that happens when we read?

"New worlds open up. I don’t have to have stayed in Cameroon to be able to conjure up, all the same, how the people there live and think, once I’ve read a novel set in the country. Strangers open up to me, I can share their fears and joys, and sometimes can’t help being moved to tears. Information, important and not very important, gathers inside my head. And many wise sayings in books still matter to me years later."

Many people say they don’t have the time to read. What can they do about it?

"Reading is something one can do anywhere. And time depends on one’s order of priorities. Watch a little less television and surf a little less on the internet: suddenly, you’ll have time enough."

Has a Norwegian book given you a reading experience that you remember with pleasure?

"I read my first Norwegian book as a twelve-year-old: the Anne trilogy by Berte Bratt. Berte Bratt is the pseudonym of the Norwegian writer Annik Saxegaard. As a girl who grew up in a farm outside a village, I was truly gripped by Anne’s story: Anne, a young girl growing up in ‘Möwenfjord’, goes to live in the city and, despite various troubles, finds happiness in the end. So much of all this allowed me to identify happily with Anne. I read the series of books again and again."

Translated from the German by Anna Paterson

Visit the Rote Zora's website here.

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