Bring up the Bodies -- Old Books Laid to Rest in Cuisery

As promised, here is another ravishing bookshop from the enchanting book village of Cuisery in the Saone et Loire department of France.

We wandered around the ancient streets peering at irresistible doors, including the one to the 13th century chapel, with its (timeless) plea not to piss against it as the urine  then enters the church!

I found myself feeling vaguely compromised: here I was, pressing my nose against the windows of wonderful bookshops with their precious cargo of rare and characterful books, with my recently acquired Ipad, loaded up with Hilary Mantel's latest, lying heavy as a bad conscience in my bag.

I won't stop buying books, real books, paper books, books that smell, books that age, books that crack when you bend back the spine, ever. But I can't promise that I won't continue some kind of illicit relationship, a guilty affair, with my Ipad, even though I hate the fact that it doesn't have page numbers and I can't weigh in my hand how much I have read and how much there is still to go.  I miss looking at the cover of the book when I start reading, I didn't realise how much it helped to locate me in the story.

Electronic reading is convenient and pragmatic, pallid virtues which kind of compensate for the loss of orientation, for the intensity of the relationship between the reader, ink, and paper.  But the story is king, always, and the vehicle is secondary, and I'm devouring Bring up the Bodies page by weirdly backlit page.