Juliette, 27

I was born in Bordeaux, in a family where books were treated like treasure. My grandmother had a library that took up an entire wall of her apartment — floor to ceiling, French classics, poetry, novels with cracked spines and penciled notes in the margins. As a child, I was allowed to borrow any book I wanted as long as I brought it back and told her what I thought of it. Those conversations, sitting in her armchair with tea, are some of my happiest memories. I read my way through her shelves like it was a mission: Colette, Duras, Camus, then the English novels in translation, then everything else.

I am 27 now and I own a small independent bookstore in Bordeaux’s old town, near the Place du Parlement. Buying the shop two years ago was the scariest and best decision of my life. It is a beautiful old space with wooden shelves, a creaky staircase, and a reading corner with armchairs where customers are welcome to stay for hours. I curate everything myself: French literature, poetry, a strong children’s section, and a shelf of English books for the expats and students. I host author evenings, a monthly poetry night, and a book club that argues passionately and drinks a lot of wine. The shop is my second home — some days I think it might be my first.

Bordeaux’s old town is the perfect setting for a bookshop. I live in an apartment above a bakery in the Saint-Pierre quarter, and I wake up to the smell of bread every morning — there are worse ways to start a day. My boulangerie run is built into my life: a croissant or a pain aux raisins, eaten on the short walk to the shop, the heel of the baguette saved for later. The neighborhood is all golden stone, narrow streets, and little squares where people gather for coffee. At lunch, I often eat at the counter of a tiny bistro nearby, reading a proof copy between customers. The Marché des Capucins on weekends is my ritual: oysters, cheese, fruit, and flowers for the shop counter.

My weekends revolve around books and the good life. Saturday evenings often mean a dinner with friends — long, loud, full of debate about whatever everyone is reading — followed by a walk along the Garonne as the moon comes up over the water. Sundays are sacred: the market in the morning, then a slow afternoon with a book in the Jardin Public, the city’s beautiful old park, and in the evening, cooking something simple — a roast chicken, a gratin — with jazz or classical music playing. And the apéritif, always: Bordeaux is wine country, and my friends and I take full advantage. A glass of Saint-Émilion on my little balcony, the stone facades glowing in the evening light, a good conversation — that is happiness to me.

I am thoughtful, romantic in the old-fashioned sense, and quietly stubborn — you have to be, to run an independent bookshop. I listen more than I talk, but when I talk about books, I talk a lot. I write little recommendation cards for the shelves, and customers tell me they come back just for those. I am looking for a partner who loves stories — not necessarily a big reader, though that would be lovely, but someone curious about the world and about people. Someone who will come to my poetry nights, who will argue with me about the ending of a novel, who understands why a rainy Sunday with a book is a perfect day. I want a relationship with depth and gentleness: long conversations, shared silences, and the feeling of building a library together — of books, of memories, of a life.

Let me share a few more pieces of me. I am learning to bind books by hand — a slow, meditative craft I picked up at a workshop last year — and I have rebound three of my grandmother’s most worn volumes, which felt like giving them a second life. I keep a commonplace book, a journal of quotes and passages that strike me, and I have been filling it for almost a decade. My friends and I have a tradition of “blind book dates”: we wrap books in paper, write three cryptic clues on the front, and exchange them at Christmas. It is the best gift exchange I know. Once a month, I close the shop early on a Friday and take myself to the cinema alone — no phone, no company, just a film and my thoughts. I want a partner who has their own version of that: their own passions, their own rituals, their own inner life — and who will still choose, every day, to share the quiet moments with me. Someone who will read the dedication I write in the book I give them, and understand exactly what I meant.