I’ve worked in two different bookshops. I made some wonderful friends at the bookshop I worked at before the one where I work now, and we still catch up as much as we can. Not as often as we like, since we are all busy people, but every time we do see each other, we get on like a house on fire. There is aways good food involved, and lots of laughs, but what I love most about this group of friends is what we talk about.
Of course, since we’ve all worked in a bookshop, we all love books, and we do talk about books, but not just books. Elizabeth is an artists, and works as a curator in a university gallery; Ben is an young adult author and movie, comics and video game enthusiast; Will is moving to London soon to study performance at an acting school; and Kate (who unfortunately for us, now lives in Melbourne) is an editor for Lonely Planet.
What we are interested in, not only in regards to book tastes, or art in general, or life in general, varies greatly, but I think the thing that binds us all together so well is that we are all very passionate about something. We are all passionate, and are driven by our passion. I think that people who are passionate about a certain topic, or artform, or genre, or whatever it may be, understand other people being passionate, even if they know absolutely nothing about that topic. Another of my closest friends is studying diatetics, and she lives and breathes food and nutrition, and when I am with her, I find myself being really interested in nutrition too (I am always interested in food, but usually the wrong sort of food – desserts).
Although I don’t see my old bookshop friends as often as I like, every time I do see them, it reminds me that I need to surround myself with passionate people. They inspire you to be passionate too, and to do the thing that you love. Hopefully, I am a passionate person too, and I can inspire them a little bit as well.
1001 Children's Books 