Old Professor’s Bookshop

Located on a hill of Belfast’s charming seaside strip of shops, this is one of few businesses I’ve visited lately where it didn’t even occur to me to try to digitally document everything. It’s just that analog, I guess; perfectly befitting the house of print that it is.
Old Professor’s Bookshop is a legit trove where a single shopkeeper lets you do your thing among the unusually well organized shelves where you will find old volumes, esoterica, and past issue academic books, classics, and plenty of cutting edge titles as well.
Unlike many other places with the depth and range of selection you can admire here, it is not dusty or creepy in any corner of the shop, but has all the mellowness of an old parlor that is quiet but not uptight by any means.
I think anyone who enters this space will go through three stages of exploration:
(1) Impulsive [’Wow…I’ve always wanted a Victorian era record of insects an a 1970s picture book on quantum mechanics!”]
(2) Analytical [’What do I REALLY want? Is it worth buying it? Do I NEED it? What does it say of me as person if I a interested or uninterested in acquiring a certain bok? Why can’t I think of what I’m looking for in this store, OR in life? What time is it; how long have I been here? How much time is left to browse, and is it worth spending the time required to make a thorough excavation of everything?”]
(3) Open-​Minded [’I’m sure this is the kind of rare place with a Philosophy section worth seeing, and maybe something will jump out at me if I check that out.’]
…at which point you will find one thing that you were looking for, which you could have gotten off of Amazon (and don’t even MENTION e-​readers to me) since you first desired it, but just didn’t desire to purchase it that way.
For me, this thing was «Either/​Or» by Danish philosopher Søren Aabye Kierkegaard. I headed up to the little counter, next to which was a rotating display of classical music CDs, and upon which were neatly arranged brochures and fliers for festivals, chamber music performances, and short fiction writers’ residencies.
«I’ve been looking for this everywhere!» I said to the man who rang me up.
«Looks like you found it,» he said, carefully slipping the book into a thin little paper bag just the size of a book. Outside, the thunderclouds opened up onto the street, and I took additional pleasure shrieking and running back to the car with my friend, with the unprotective paper bag and its contents stuffed under my shirt and pressed to my bookish heart.