From Florentin Bosse, Founder, Book Reader, Pilgrim:
It all started October 2015, when I returned from my six months self exile from society – or, “retreat”, the word people use nowadays for the time one needs to question the unquestionable questions - undertaking a solitary pilgrimage from Berlin to Santiago de Compostella and then further to Portugal; a pilgrimage which brought me back trust, n
ature, wisdom and love. I came back from that pilgrimage with a clear sense of purpose and a mission. But it actually all started a long time ago, when I was Robinson Crusoe, D’Artagnan, Holden Caulfield, Oliver Twist, Prince Myshkin, and many others…
I came back from my journey with this strong feeling that there is a painful search all the way through our community for regaining authenticity, authenticity of our values and our purpose. We are in a way lost in this technocratic society, have this perception of uneasiness that can not be articulated and try to find social niches for breathing empathy and surviving our social unhappiness. We seem to not be able to defend ourselves any more and we can not hide ourselves from the outside world where multitasking and switching focus every five seconds from one social media to another seems to be the mother of all things. So I came up with this idea to give people back the reading. Needless to say, you can not give people back the reading as a birthday or Christmas present. So the challenge was and is mountain high. I embarked on this journey of creating a special retreat, a space of harmony, wisdom and emotional well being. This is above all a bookshop; a bookshop that exhibits the best books ever written. A bookshop that lives through the breathing of over 500 curators, who gave me the book titles of the best 10 books they have ever read. You can read a book here in the bookshop, drink a coffee, play a game of chess or Go, have a unique culinary experience, drink a glass of wine and have a good conversation (literary, or maybe philosophical, existential or social-political) with a friend or one of our curators. This is an atmosphere bookshop, an emotional bookshop, an inspiration and a motivation bookshop as well as an workshop for teaching and learning good time, which is and will be created by all of you and will attempt to reconnect you with the books and to reconnect you with each other.
