Today we would like to introduce you to our bookstore buddy Daniela Haberkorn, who fulfilled her dream at the age of fifty and became the bookstore owner of the bookstore in Kempten.
Why did you choose to run a bookshop?
I was only a child when I started dragging bagfuls of books home from the library. I’d go back a week later to exchange them for a new lot. I always wanted to do something that involved books but instead of working for a publisher, I ended up completing my teacher training in German Studies. At the age of fifty, after years of family life and twenty years of marking German essays, I had the opportunity to fulfil my girlhood dream. I jumped at it. Ten years later, I have no regrets!
Please describe the final few meters of the route you take in the mornings to your bookshop.
In the morning, I drive down from the local hill – Mariaberg (960m) – and park in the multi-storey carpark. Walking across the historical cobbled Rathausplatz, I can make out a small display window on the other side of it and above it, the sign Lesezeichen. For a moment my heart skips a beat. I marvel at it every day and, as I open the shop up, I often think: it‘s your bookshop – look at it!
Throughout the day ... When the shop-door opens and someone steps inside....
There are many faithful customers who are pleased to be greeted by name and asked about the latest holiday or about their health. They show me titles found on the internet or elsewhere that they of course will order through me. Strangers heap praise my lovely shop and its careful selection of books, and tell me how sad they are not to have a shop like mine in their own town anymore. Others put their heads round the door to ask for something new to read and what do I suggest?!
What is the wonderful thing that happens when we read?
Ever since childhood I feel that reading is like being transported into the worlds of strangers and sharing the lives of others. You empathise, cry and laugh. On the other hand, you can read things that suddenly alert your mind. You are presented with enlightening and controversial arguments and offered new perspectives. As for me, reading makes me calm and content!
Many say they don’t have the time to read. What can they do about that?
That’s something they’ve got to deal with themselves. It is one of many possible passions and for these you simply have to find the time. “Reading is better than tidying!”
Has a Norwegian book given you a reading experience that you remember with pleasure?
I love Siri Hustvedt, who just explained in the interview series ‘When Feelings Find Words’ how important Norway has been for the development of her writing. In the wintertime here in Allgäu I enjoy reading the crime novels by Anne Holt or Gard Sven. From the Winter Archives by Merethe Lindholm (not yet translated into English) made me shiver and Linn Ullmann‘s novel Unquiet (norw. De orolige, transl. by Thilo Reinhart, W.W. Norton, 2016) moved me profoundly.
From the German by Anna Paterson.
Visit the the webside of Buchhandlung Lesezeichen in Kempten here.
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