Great bookshops are about much more than books.  The best ones display something of what’s best about the human spirit.  Perhaps a sense of curiosity, imagination, or adventure, the longing to learn and communicate.  I often find when I leave a newly discovered bookshop that what stays with me is something it reveals about its proprietors.

Enthusiasm and fun are what strike you when you browse around Littered With Books, a small store on two levels on Duxton Road.  The neighborhood is sleepy on Sunday afternoons.  There were few customers in the bookshop but the young staff bustled around, laughing and having fun.  Colorful, handwritten post-it notes litter the edges of the shelves, recommending things to read and dispensing advice and bons mots.  A skylight in the middle of the shop floods the room with light, adding somehow to the feeling that this is a place telling you it’s OK to have fun here. The least I could do faced with all this generosity and warmth was to buy something.  I walked out with Kazuo Ishiguro’s Come Rain or Come Shine.  The salesperson gave me a free bookmark, of course.  It was pretty and fun, of course.