1. Tell me about that imaginary bookshop you dream about running.
A secret bookshop: incredibly easy to pass by unless you know it’s there, selling specifically rare books, pocket-sized books, and poetry editions, as well as offering a large used books section with very friendly prizes. (The customers I want are hunters and poor poets.) There’s armchairs to read in. We serve coffee the way they serve coffee at a bank: complimentary if you’re a regular spender. There’s a room in the back where cigars are smoked but you’re not allowed: you heard from a friend who heard from an acquaintance. Seances are said to be held there. There’s a waft of incense. Jk, I don’t think incense and books go together. No, the incense isn’t really there. You’re invited to hallucinate some.
4. Tell me about that one book that you can’t remember the title of and maybe you just made it up except you remember that one specific thing so clearly.
A Soviet sci-fi novel in which the entire world is – I’m not sure if it’s another planet, perhaps it’s an apocalyptic setting: either way there’s something disturbing about it – and in this disturbing world, our main character wakes up with an existential crisis, you know, the what’s and why’s and the possibility of dying and what not – and he resolves it by exercise – all the while parroting Soviet slogans about the importance of morning workouts. Ten year-old me felt like someone slapped me into another dimension. I had fever dreams about it. The whole thing might well be a fever dream.
15. What’s a cover that fooled you?
answered here
