Getting lost

They knew that browsing was the primary activity the space would be meant to support and that the browsers' ability to lose themselves would be of paramount importance.

Jeff Deutsch, In Praise of Good Bookstores

In the comment above, Jeff Deutsch is describing the objectives given to the architect charged with designing new quarters for the Seminary Co-op Bookstore in Chicago, right,  before it moved from Chicago Theological Seminary. It was designed intentionally to be a place where book browsers could get lost in.

I assume this means both figuratively and literally, both a place to lose track of time and a place to lose track of where you are.

In my long life of bookstore browsing I have been in just three bookstores in which I wasn't entirely clear at all times in which direction the exit might be. These are Powell Books in Portland, John K. King Books in Detroit and the Book Loft in the German Village section of Columbus, Ohio. I've visited two huge bookstores in Cleveland and Toronto that, despite their size, were fairly easy to navigate. The so-called World Largest Bookstore in Toronto, for example, is essentially just two large open floors. I may have been able to get lost in the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris, but unfortunately I wasn't able to stay there long enough to find out.

A few days I wrote about book browsing being a solitary activity ("Solitary search," Jan. 13). A bookstore one can get lost in is one that makes solitary browsing easier. There are so many rooms, as at the Book Loft, and so many shelves and so many pathways, that it is becomes easy to get separated from other shoppers, even if there are dozens of people in the same store at the same time.

If I were to design the bookstore of my dreams, I believe a structure one could get lost in would be one of my top priorities too.