As someone who loves reading and writing, a bookstore can often feel like a home away from home. They’re cosy, calming, and complete with a particular smell that is pleasant like your grandparents’ house. Growing up in Tokyo, I never had access to many English bookstores. While they exist, they’re not as prevalent as the numerous Japanese ones making up the city, which is why whenever I’d go to England to see the English side of my family, I always looked forward to visiting bookstores like Waterstones and WH Smith. Even when I was younger, bookstores never failed to cast their magic spell on me. They were otherworldly, possessing a deep, spiritual quality that as a kid I could never understand nor put my finger on. Now that I’m older and I’m trying to make a living writing, the ethereal essence of a bookstore continues to hold me in a transfixed wonder. Scouring shelves filled with names of literary titans I’ve come to admire and be inspired by, I can’t help but fantasize about how one day perhaps my books will line the shelves with theirs, and so side by side we’ll sit, no longer as a subordinate looking up to a superior, but as equals. Moving to Saigon, I was always on the hunt for a good bookstore to while away the hours. I never had one until recently.
Pages of Passion opened six months ago. Run by husband and wife duo Huy and Thao, they each left behind jobs in the corporate world to open up the store. I recall first hearing about the place and immediately talking to Garrett, one third of District 0. He’d also heard the news, had already been to visit and only spoke highly of the place. I couldn’t wait to check it out myself seeing as up until that point, I hadn’t had that great an experience with bookstores in Saigon—Really, it’d been pretty much nonexistent. For one, similar to my situation in Tokyo, there just aren’t many English bookstores in the city. Of course I’d done my rounds at Ho Chi Minh City’s Book Street—when I first arrived I spent a good deal of time there, owing to how the street gave me the impression you were stepping away from the bustle of Saigon and into some calm, picturesque avenue of the kind you’d find in a countryside town in Europe. Still, despite the love I felt and still do feel for Book Street, the selection of English language books was always lacking, essentially regulated to a few boxes outside a store on one end of the street. So while I can spend a few hours in one of the cafes on Book Street, at the end of the day the place doesn’t give me that same sense of wonder and deep spirituality bookstores have in the past. Visiting Pages of Passion that first time, I remembered that old feeling.
Located on the sixth floor of one of those massive slabs of a building in District 1, Pages of Passion is tucked away like so many of the best things are in Saigon. Walking up the flight of stairs, I stopped at each floor to peek in at the other stores. A lot of small, cute cafes. Though hidden, there were people in every one: friends enjoying an afternoon of conversation, young couples watching the seconds slowly pass in each other’s eyes. When I got to the sixth floor, I walked into a corridor. No one else was around and for a moment, Saigon, a city that’s normally so loud and rambling, turned quiet. Opening the door, I walked inside.
Pages of Passion had only been open for about a month when I first visited. As expected, the place was a clutter of books, hundreds of paperbacks lining the tall, wooden shelves while even more were stacked one atop the other all over the floor as well as along the register, making something of a fortress behind which Huy and Thao sat, pausing from their work to welcome me in. They were friendly and accommodating from the get-go, and laughed with good nature and a pinch of disbelief at the fact that they’d actually done it—They’d left stable careers to open up a bookshop. Still, there wasn’t a hint of regret in their decision. I admired them for that. Doing a u-turn when you’ve gone so far in a career is never easy and most people decide against doing so out of sheer fear for what might happen if they take the leap. While there was a massive learning curve which they continue to figure out everyday, Huy and Thao had taken that first, vital step.
After a brief chat, I began looking through the shelves. Thao and Huy went silent, letting me sink into that meditative feeling as I scoured the books: hardbacks and paperbacks of all colours and sizes, author names and titles popping out one by one as my gaze went from spine to spine, recognising some, not knowing others, picking a few up here and there to get a view of the cover and read the blurb. Once again, I lost track of myself. Submerged deeper and deeper into a dark blue ocean in my mind where time lost all meaning and I was free to wade in the calm, cool waters. In the end I picked up a copy of Pablo Neruda’s 100 Love Sonnets. It sits on my coffee table to this day.
After my first visit, I didn’t go back to Pages of Passion for several months. That didn’t have anything to do with not wanting to, but more just the fact that my shelves at home were stacked with books I still needed to read. Apart from that, life is good at getting in the way of letting you take an afternoon off relaxing, whether it be at a swimming pool, barbershop, or a bookstore. When I finally did get around to making the trip recently, I didn’t go with any intention of looking for a specific book, but more just out of a desire to see how Pages of Passion was doing since my first visit. So up the stairs I went, stopping at each floor to peek in at the other stores. There were people in every one: friends laughing, taking photos of one another, young lovers sitting hand in hand, so still they resembled Greek statues in their embrace. When I got to the sixth floor, I walked into a corridor. No one else was around and for a moment, Saigon, a city that’s normally so wild and noisy, turned quiet. I opened the door and walked inside. Huy sat behind the counter, Thao was talking to a friend on a couch by the entrance. They recognised me, smiled and said Hello, and the place cast its magical spell on me, just as all good bookstores do.
