A few days ago, I was catching up with a friend and we came across a second hand bookstore. Since we’re both fairly keen readers, we decided to go inside and have a browse. The store itself was tiny – perhaps no more than 30m² – but it was filled with books. Tables, bookshelves and baskets did their best to order the vast collection, but there simply wasn’t enough room. Baskets were like boulders on the floor and each step threatened to topple the books within them, like water in a cup. To say it was like walking through a jungle wouldn’t be an exaggeration.

Despite its cramped nature, there was a certain reverence about this bookstore which gave me the shivers. Recently, I’ve begun to read more and if there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that books are powerful. For the first time in history, the ability for people and ideas to connect through the written word aren’t limited by the shackles of time or place. That’s pretty extraordinary. Want to discover the basis of the Jewish faith? Read the Torah. Want to learn a new skill? Read a guide. Want to discover how someone thought? Read their autobiography. And with the rise of audiobooks and eBooks, the accessibility of these ideas is greater than ever.

As the scientist, astronomer and author, Carl Sagan put it:

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

As I was standing in the cramped bookstore, this realisation hit me hard. How many hours has someone out there someone spent writing these books? How many ideas were hidden within these funny dark squiggles? The magic pulsing from these worn out pages were palpable, shaking me to my very core. There is so much to discover, but so little time.

For these ideas expressed more eloquently, I highly recommend watching this YouTube movie: BOOKSTORES: How to Read More Books in the Golden Age of Content. Probably the best YouTube video I’ve seen this year.