Today we would like to present our bookstore buddy Thomas Mahr from Langenau in Swabia. Thomas Mahr, who runs Buchhandlung Mahr with a great dedication and passion, will be present "Book Fair Guest of Honour Norway" on 16 October.
Dear Mr. Mahr, why did you choose to run a bookshop?
Not to make lots of money that’s for sure. Never mind, selling books is the most wonderful job imaginable because the entire world can come visiting, and stay in my bookshelves,
Please describe the final few meters of the route you take in the mornings to your bookshop.
I have to walk for a kilometre every morning and meanwhile my head is at work thinking over the agenda of the day. Until the last stretch when it is set free and allowed to think about books.
Throughout the day ...When the shop-door opens and someone steps inside...
…mostly it’s just like my first day in the shop when every reader brought at least one new surprise for me to wonder about.
What is the wonderful thing that happens when we read?
We can experience hugely exciting adventures inside out heads. I was fourteen years old and reading Robinson Crusoe when it happened to me for the first time. I was of course on a deserted island myself. Reading is making virtual journeys of adventure but books can also offer answers to the great questions of all times – which must not be forgotten!
Many say they don’t have the time to read. What can they do about that?
You only live once. Our motto is ‘Stop dusting ad keep turning the pages!’ The only problem is that reading is an anarchic practice that doesn’t fit easily into an orderly timetable. This is what I recommend: drop out from your daily routine and read. It shouldn’t take more than forty pages before any good book has got you under its spell. It’s not matter of when or where, only of what you care about in your life.
Has a Norwegian book given you a reading experience that you remember with pleasure?
I shall have to give two printed works equal status. One of them is a theatrical performance of Henrik Ibsen’s play Nora that I went to see when I was a student some forty years ago in Munich. The particular play has stayed with me ever since. At the time it made me realise with great force just how powerful the theatre can be.
The other outstanding work I must mention is Jostein Gaarder‘s book Sophie’s World (transl. Paulette Møller for Farrar, Straus and Giroux (US), 1994; Orion Children's Books (UK), new edition,2000). We were lucky enough to launch it at a party sponsored by its publisher Hanser Kinderbuch Verlag. From then on this book became a genuine guide for us.
From the German by Anna Paterson.
Visit the the webside of Buchhandlung Mahr here.
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