Fine Books on Palma's C. Morei is unlike any other bookshop in Mallorca. Apart from the fact that mostly all of the books are in English, it is a massive collection of secondhand books arranged on shelves but with no obvious system of cataloguing. It is the sort of place you might stumble across in an English town, or might have done in the past, a treasure trove for collectors, the curious and those who still cherish books in a highly technological age.
Rodney Browne started his business some forty years ago in Bournemouth. He moved to Mallorca fourteen years ago, and the books came with him. But now, aged 78 and with health issues, he has decided to close the shop. His daughter, Sara Jane, is helping him with the closure and the sale of all those books. Over the week of October 10 to 15, everything, or as much as possible, must go.
Sara Jane estimates that there are more than 100,000 books. She says that her father may well have only read three or four books in his life. "He doesn't like to read, but he knows more than anyone about books, their authors, every story."
Her father, she adds, "is a character". "Either he's nice to people or a curmudgeon. He has a great dislike for people who come in with a backpack." But he's well-loved in the neighbourhood and the shop has attracted its share of famous people, Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones among them.
Not everyone, she explains, has wanted to buy books in order to read them. "Recently, a German came and spent 2,000 euros on old books. He wanted a very specific decoration and style for the house that he had renovated. They weren't for reading."
She has her own career and family to dedicate herself to. There's no other member of the family who can keep the shop going. For Rodney, it has been a difficult decision, but his health has left him with no other option than to sell up and close the shop.