For Sonya’s Three Line Tales photo prompt.
photo by Clem Onojeghuo via Unsplash
Every market day for the last twenty-seven years he has set up his stand, laid out his merchandise, books stuffed with magic between their shining covers, and waited for customers.
In the beginning, he had sold books; people had stroked the bright coloured covers and dipped inside, tasting the contents first, and he had watched their faces grow absorbed, the worries of their hum-drum lives put on hold.
Things change, laws and attitudes, and today, as the police make him pack away the shining friends that no one has glanced at in weeks, he knows he has to leave and find a place where people still need magic in their lives.
Jane Dougherty Writes 
What a great story, Jane. Nice job!
Thank you! I wonder how long the second-hand booksellers on the markets will last. Will people always read, or will it become a marginal slightly subversive activity?
I’m hoping people will always read. Sigh!
I hope they will too. I deeply distrust regimes that censor books and decide what we should and should not know.
The magic of books :)?
Seems as though it’s fading in this case.
Ow well, let’s hope it isn’t the case. I believe it’s more so a case of saturation with how the market has become. With how commercialised it has gotten and selective of certain types of stories. 🙂 I suspect that people tend to read less if books surprise less.
As long as we keep putting the death of books into dystopian futures, there’s hope that it won’t ever happen 🙂
Great story as usual Jane.
Thank you!
Sad, but well-told. I’m hoping people will always want to read.
A lot of people now don’t want as many physical books, but they still read. Or as someone was telling me recently, it’s easier on her aging eyes to read her Kindle, where she can make the font larger.
I agree with your comment above about regimes that censor.
Words are powerful, it’s true. Even the phenomenon of the social media and how they can bring down regimes by spreading stories with no foundation in truth.
Yes, good point.
We still have street booksellers in New York, but not so many bookstores any more. But I think books will be around for awhile still. (K)
I’m sure they will. The fact that so many dystopias have book burning or banning gives the impression that we consider books to be important still. The only hesitation I have is that dystopian novels are written by writers ergo they have a certain vested interest in how we regard books…
True enough. I do see young people with books though. It’s not just us old folks.
They do read, and it’s probably a myth that in the good old days everyone had his/her head stuck in a book.