The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

"Instead of whispering instructions to them like you would to a horse - lie down, woman, put your harness on - you should listen to them. Listen to what they want. In fact, they want to be free and to sail across the sky." 

"It takes only one word to hurt woman, a matter of seconds, one stupid, impatient blow of the crop. But winning back her trust takes years. And sometimes there isn't the time."

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

"Jeanno, women can love so much more intelligently than us men! They never love a man for his body, even if they can enjoy that too - and how. But women love you for your character, your strength, your intelligence. Or because you can protect a child. Because you're a good person, you're honourable and dignified. They never love you as stupidly men love women. Not because you've got especially beautiful calves or look good in a suit that their business partners look on jealously when they introduce you. Such women do exist, but only as a cautionary example to others. A horse admires your overall personality"

Those above are some paragraphs quoted from the above book, as given by a father, Monsieur Joaquin Perdu, to his son, Jean Albert Victor Perdu, in short Jean Perdu, who owns the Literary Apothecary, a boat with a low-slung belly, a galley, two sleeping berths, a bathroom and eight thousand books.

"I sell books like medicines. There are books that are suitable for a million people, others only for a hundred. There are even medicines - sorry, books - that were written for one person only."

"Putting the right novels to the appropriate ailments, that's how I sell books."

Well, that's true. He has the ability to sense which books will soothe the troubled soul of his customers.

However, he is unable to cure, himself, since the night, twenty-one years ago, the love of his life fled Paris, leaving behind a handwritten letter that he has never dared read.

"Sanary says that you have to travel south by water to find answers to your dreams. He says too that you find yourself again there, but only if you get lost on the way - completely lost. Through love. Through longing. Through fear. Down south they listen to the sea in order to understand that laughing and crying sound the same, and that the soul sometimes needs to cry to be happy."

He sailed his floating bookshop to the south, Provence, to search for his beloved.

"Habit is a vain and treacherous goddess. She lets nothing disrupt her rule. She smothers one desire after another: the desire to travel, the desire for a better job or a new love. She stops us from living as we would like, because habit prevents us from asking ourselves whether we continue to enjoy what we do."

It's a beautiful book to read. I fall in love with the words it's said, the meaning that the author wants to convey.

It's equipped with alluring poems and diary of Manon. A must read book written by a journalist and the author of numerous bestselling novels, Nina George. Find out what's going on till the end and make it as a must read book this year! Hope you'll love it the way I do :)