Imaginary Bookshop

Stop me if I've already told you this, but amongst the dreams I've had of late, (they are very vivid and apparently linked to some of the medication I take for my blood pressure), the one which has stood out is the one where my best friend is running a bookshop.  Not just any bookshop - the dream was so realistic and memorable that I can even identify the bookshop as a second hand bookseller I've often frequented, (as has my friend).  Anyway, she's running this shop and I'm there with some stock I've acquired for her: a boxful of old paperbacks.  Except that there's something about them that my friend doesn't like - she's giving me that look of slightly exasperated disappointment I know so well.  Quite what the problem was, I don't know.  Perhaps it was because they weren't DIY books - the only other dreams my friend tends to appear in are ones where I'm doing DIY, suffer some appalling mishap, at which point she turns up to laugh.  (I can't help but feel that these dreams are making some profound comment on the nature of our friendship).  I did ask my friend if she'd been buying bookshops without telling me, but she point blank denied it.  Which is a pity, as she could have offered me a job in her imaginary bookshop.

The dream got me thinking, though - is buying a bookshop simply the stuff of dreams?  I actually did a bit of research and discovered that it isn't such a crazy idea.  I found that there were several book selling businesses currently on the market, many at very affordable prices.  OK, there's the question of whether, having bought it, you could actually make a living from it is another question, (presumably the reason that some of them are for sale in the first place is because their current owners can't).  Certainly, the annual turnover figures given for some indicate that profit margins are tight.  But hey, it's another option to think about in terms of my proposed 'reinvention' of myself.  It sits at the extreme end of the possibilities for this - I imagine it could be pretty stressful, which, obviously, is what I'm trying to avoid these days.  But you never know.  So far I haven't seen any bookshops for sale which would be geographically convenient for me, but who knows?  And if it was my bookshop, then I wouldn't have to worry about my friend being disapproving of the stock I buy for it...