The Christmas Bookshop

What do you think happiness is?” she asked him. “A by-product,” he answered immediately, “to being useful.

And his advice, you know. Find something true to your spirit and your soul and do it every day.

People buy things in the hope that it will make them feel better,” said Blair. “It gives you a momentary boost, just buying it, but not for long. It’s just a stupid dopamine hit

Oh God,” said Carmen. “I always do this. I just dive straight in and speak and get myself into so much trouble.” Oke smiled. “Have you ever thought about not doing that?” “All the time,” she said, looking up at him. The snowflakes were settling on his hair. “But usually it’s exactly five seconds after I just said the thing that got me into trouble.

I think people get unhappy trying to do what makes them happy.

All days are special days. Every day we should feel, I hope, a little grace. And we can use it to bring peace in everything we do, to reconcile and bear quiet witness to our common humanity. Sorry. I don’t really have anything special to say . . .” “Actually,” said their mother, “that was perfect.

Sometimes,” said Phoebe, “people say ‘be kind’ when they just mean ‘shut up.

And tiny Leone smiled and took the book after Carmen carefully wrapped it up in paper and held it tight to her breast, as if she both loved it and was slightly scared of it, which were not, after all, the worst emotions to feel about a book.

Carmen measured her days in books. She kept a paperback under the desk for quiet periods, when she had remade as many window displays as one could usefully do in one day, and dusted, polished, straightened and checked the samples. When she had first started working at Dounston’s, they had always been so busy, and she’d kept her reading for the bus and lunchtime. Now, she could get through a novel every three days, and it kept getting faster. It was very, very worrying.

Carmen measured her days in books.

Carmen followed her heart and read books wherever her interests took her, about space, history, romance, anything she felt like, alighting from one to the next like a butterfly. Carmen shrugged.

I think he’s barely left the house he was born in his whole life. He likes books more than people.

I think everyone’s a fraud,” she said. Blair blinked. “What do you mean?” “Everyone’s just faking it. Look at the prime minister. Faking it. Look at people who are in charge of things. Faking it, faking it, faking it. Of course you’re faking it. I’m faking it. I don’t know how to run a bookshop. Not the faintest clue. Mr. McCredie doesn’t either. ‘Faking it’ is just another term for being a grown-up. So . . .

He has, like, a bat cave,” he gasped. “But the bat cave is just, like, moldy old books. That is excellent!”—

Edinburgh was the first designed city in the world. The birth of the Enlightenment. The whole idea that we could plan our futures for ourselves, that we were not dependent on the whims of God, that we could conquer our animal natures, find our place in the world. That from this jumbled”—he swept his arm around at the jammed-together old houses on the up-and-down cobbled streets of the Old Town—“thrown-together world, you could have beauty, order, fresh air. The New Town is philosophy made stone.

She couldn’t even be jealous; it was something so lovely and far out of reach. It would be like being jealous of Amal Clooney.

Find something true to your spirit and your soul and do it every day.

That’s not a telephone,” he said. “It’s a magic wand hell-bent on destroying the world. But you call it what you want. Magic waves, blah blah blah.

No!” said Sofia. “I read! Self-help can be very useful.” She gave her sister a meaningful look. “Really?” said Carmen. “As useful as Rainbow Rowell? Or Douglas Adams? I doubt it.

Marbled endpapers, Mr. McCredie observed, meant nothing to children. But they meant a lot to those who loved color and beauty and stories that would never end.

From every tiny coffee shop in every nook and cranny came the enchanting smells of gingerbread and cinnamon, and over at the Christmas market,

But what is terrible about it doesn’t mean it isn’t beautiful.

Although often I find in music . . .” “There is, like, divine stuff?

I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday” came on the in-house stereo. “Like that,” he said. “Christmas every day would be hell. It would be torture; it would be awful.

It’s very hard to storm out properly when there are children,

Yes, it’s for my Christmas book group! We’re going to meet and discuss the Christmas book for five minutes, then drink mulled wine and eat mince pies until we are sick!

I’m a Quaker. We try to live with”—his hand batted around, as if looking for the right expression—“a kind of . . . gentle grace. Every day. So that we don’t have to make a fuss or make ourselves excited.

He looked back at her, surprised. “Well,” he said, “if you do good work and are useful, that makes you happy.