Our bookstore buddies: Andreas Wallentin

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Bookseller interview

Today we would like to present to you our bookstore buddy Andreas Wallentin, owner of the Buchhandlung Daub in Menden.

Andreas Wallentin. Photo: Buchhandlung Daub

Dear Mr. Wallentin, why did you choose to run a bookshop?

It is the most wonderful job in the world!

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

Cycling through a part of my home town with a ‘living street’ design and traffic-calming features. Then I enter the shop through the back door and my day truly begins.

The bookstore Daub is located in the center of the city center of Menden. Photo: Andreas Wallentin

Throughout the day ...When the shop-door opens and someone steps inside...

I am delighted. So, I wish the friend of our bookshop warmly welcome. I’m always looking forward to finding out how I can help him or her.

What is the wonderful thing that happens when we read?

A film rolls inside your head, your imagination sets to work, landscape and people come alive – and so a whole parallel world comes into being.

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

It can be done everywhere: In the trains, in bed or anywhere in and around your living space including your garden or your desk.

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

There are many wonderful Norwegian writers but currently, I feel the most notable is Erling Kagge with his Silence: In the Age of Noise (trnsl. by Betty L Crook, published by Viking, 2017). When everything around me is quiet you hear only the breathing of the world and several images fill my mind. Then again, there’s always my favourite Norwegian writer: Jo Nesbø.

From the German by Anna Paterson.

Visit the the webside of Buchhandlung Daub in Menden here.

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