'Visited by the Bookstore Angel'

“Such places are not merely shops. They are glorious strongholds of true civilisation. They refuse to flatter the customer, to congratulate him for being there, to ‘educate,’ ‘affirm,’ or ‘challenge’ him with the unctuous do-goodery tone favoured by the Anglo-American retail class. They simply present the books—magnificent, absurd, profound, forgotten, indispensable—and trust that an adult may sort through them with whatever discernment God has seen fit to bestow.” The author is J.J. Kimche, proprietor of the newsletter “The Jew from Nowhere,” writing in “A Land Flowing with Books and Paradoxes,” his celebration of Israel as “a country of bookstores.” I read it before my middle son and I visited Kaboom Books here in Houston on Saturday. “I have long resigned myself,” Kimche writes, “to the tragic deracination of the book-purchasing experience in the English-speaking world. Bluntly put, bookstores these days are a disgrace.” Kaboom is a happy exception. I have never left the shop…