"Viewing Kyoto from the Bookstore Window": A good book can not only speak, it may also be a "treasure map"!

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Huiwenshe’s Bookstore Philosophy

This book records the secrets about books and bookstores…

” Every book in the store is carefully selected by the store staff, and it is not “as long as it is new, it will be put on the shelf”; the bookcase is not only used to display books, but also hopes to create unexpected and beautiful encounters. Books with full sense of design are displayed refreshingly, allowing visitors to enjoy a visual feast. Books are not only a tool for delivering instant information and acquiring knowledge, they also have various aspects. Some books can be spent a whole summer vacation savoring, can be carried around in a bag, or placed in a bookcase to become part of the interior decoration. In modern society where information transmission speed is getting faster and faster. The nostalgia of books and the slow pace of information are qualities we want to cherish. ”──“Eiwensha Declaration” is excerpted from “Viewing Kyoto from the Bookstore Window”

The book uses “Hui Wenshe” as the first person to tell short stories about people, things and things related to books and bookstores. For example, asking an illustrator to design a “not too obvious but very stylish” book jacket that comes with the book for the library book sold in the store; or an unpopular science fiction book that is randomly “placed” in the store, because such “placement” triggers bookstores to follow up and sell the book; and bookstores The winter used book market has been held for eight years. One year, for 500 used books, I collected my personal thoughts on each used book and shared the process of encountering the used books. As a result, I published a prose book called “500 Family Letters” that is different from the book catalogue, and actually published the second volume…

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The on-site experience of visiting Huiwen Society in person

Of course, I didn’t believe in such a dream bookstore and the beautiful world of books. “No matter how great a bookstore is, it just sells books, right?” I thought so, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to explore such a bookstore. As I kept flipping through the book, my heart became excited without realizing it. I could feel the mood of the pirates in “Treasure Island” who had the treasure map. Think about it, it should be much easier to fly than to set sail to the great waterway! In the end, I came to “Huiwenshe” with the mood of looking for “One Piece”.

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Next door to the bookstore is another “Huiwenshe” lifestyle grocery store. The bookstore and the grocery store are connected, and they sell “carefully selected” and “high-quality products” from “Huiwenshe”. The book emphasizes the so-called “carefully selected” and “high-quality” words. Whether it is handicrafts, old furniture, ancient books (second-hand books), etc., as long as they are selected by the store and suitable for sale in the store in a certain manner, it can call itself a “boutique store”, which is also a business attitude.

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The bookstore has a stationery area and a small exhibition space. There should be many grocery stores and specialty bookstores in Taiwan who have come here to learn from it, because I have also seen some products that have been and are currently on the shelves in Taiwan’s specialty stores and bookstores.

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Those in the know will have noticed that the publications of Taiwan Hansheng are placed above the signature coffee beans of “Hui Wenshe”. (The story of coffee beans is mentioned in the book)

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Through the interaction between books and items other than books in the store, you can feel the atmosphere of a beautiful encounter with books that the manifesto of “Hui Wenshe” aims to create.

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The curatorial spirit of bookstores

The carefully selected books in the bookstore are presented through layout design, which seems to give each book its own personality, and invisibly creates a certain dialogue between books. Just in the seemingly simple action of “arranging books”, doesn’t it also show the spirit of “curation”? [ ](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkr7vQ2nJ7jcqYp2UsambM7gR3zf6Y10n_woEBupQh2BfLU yRScH6XVdjn4F6YvQiY9raVh16z3XxvAl-w3vaem97GL2PSuGNcdDyD4_aAfnStLI3OOhWOT4fRPSG88WNlnI5​​-5sOhEbs/s1600/6.jpg)

I believe that many people in Taiwan have already brought back the secrets gained here, and each person has developed a different personality. They hope to integrate Taiwan’s culture and re-present humanistic values, just like the “Little Things Movement” that has been discussed recently. Whether it is small magazines, small books, small items, snacks, etc., I hope that the living and cultural atmosphere in Taiwan will change.

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The intellectual adventure of picking up old books and reading them again

Going back to “Kyoto from the Bookstore Window”, the book repeatedly emphasizes the emotional relationship between old objects and old books. As mentioned in the book: “It was obviously very useful in the past, but now I don’t know how to use it… It is really interesting to try to integrate such items into life. Finding the aesthetic value or other use value of items that are not practical at first glance is a kind of sensory training. This is very important for books. The same goes for stores. How to find new meanings from old practical books that are no longer useful? This is an intellectual adventure…” What an “intellectual adventure”. Looking at the thousands of publications in Taiwan every year, people are constantly reading new books. The information they rely on is not only advertising, but only large-scale publishing houses can afford advertising, but what can they get for readers? Or perhaps we have long been accustomed to receiving reading suggestions in such a passive state. Should we pick up our reading instinct again, stop treating new books as fashionable, and rediscover the value of self-interpretation in old books or classic reading?

I unconsciously began to have “little random thoughts” again. (Alas~ isn’t “micro-random thinking” popular now?)

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