Full Circle Bookshop in Oklahoma City is that kind of shop you want to disappear into for a while. Or forever. Winding, with lots of different rooms, and shelves that reach all the way to the celing, and sofas and chairs and a classical guitarist playing on Friday Nights – it was a miracle I managed to leave at all!

They also had book ladders, you know, the kind of thing they have in the library of Beauty and the Beast, in what is no doubt the most romantic scene that’s ever appeared in a Disney movie. Usually, I blame Pride and Prejudice for me being single, but now that I think of it – maybe I’m just waiting for someone to present me with an amazing library (with book ladders, I need hardly ask) on our third date. Subconsciously, I might just have sat around there on a perfectly good date with some charming man or woman or beast and thought: “I don’t know, it’s just like… something is missing.”

If so, I can’t imagine a better reason to stay single.

Co-incidently, Julia of Full Circle Bookshop told me that a woman had come in the other week dressed exactly like Belle of Beaty and the Beast in order to take photos on the book ladders. I was a bit disappointed. I had hoped that she had come in dressed exacly like Belle just to sit around and read.

“So, tell me”, I asked the bookseller behind the counter while buying a book (impossible to resist). “Do you get to climb them?”
He looked sort of strange at me and said heistatingly: “Sure… I mean, sometimes.”
I nodded. “It’s a great job.”