People stand next to banana boxes and read books. An icon that appears more and more often at summer festivals and cultural events not only in the Zlín region. Karel Gregor and his Wandering Books project are on the cards. He has been traveling with a second-hand bookshop for more than three years and says he has spent as much time in second-hand bookshops as in pubs like a student
“We usually go to events with a dozen banana bags full of dozens of books. We don’t bring in waste paper and we usually take care of their condition. There is hate I have damaged books,” said Karel Gregor, who founded three years ago. -a second-hand bookshop and later a mobile second-hand bookstore Wandering books.
“Banana boxes are absolutely essential in the world of second-hand booksellers. They are light and protect books. In some second-hand bookshops in Prague, I have even sold them for two pennies, ” he laughs.
Before founding Potulné knihy, he ran the poetry cafe and gallery Ulité Kafé in Uherské Brod for seven years. He invited poets, writers, painters, musicians, theater artists and travelers to give talks, or to read something from their work. In Slovácko, he and his friends managed to build a cafe community of supporters who came to him from all over the region. In the end, however, he ran into the limits of the small town and personal disputes with the locals, because of which he decided to close the cafe. “However, the time has passed. Now we benefit a little from Ulité Kafé’s cultural and social capital with books. We only go to related festivals and cover our cultural events friends and our acquaintances, who respect our work,” explains the traveling antique.
He found me
He first started selling books three years ago in the now defunct Jizba cafe at the Luhovany Vincent festival in Luhačovice. “It was the owner and his friend Lukáš Kaňovský who brought us to the idea of book pop-ups,” recalls Karel. For the past three years, they have regularly toured the best festivals in Zlín and South Moravian regions with the “boxes” such as Summer Film School, V húští, Lukovská jzva, Fryštácký malý svět, WiFič VEN!, Horem Dolem, Žítkovská kopa , Feast of Fools, MišMaš, Na Salaši or Discussion at Bigbit.
“He found me by himself. I thought for a long time that I would like an e-shop, before the books at home had to literally fall on my head to make it happen,” he laughs. “It also helped when Jiří Weiss, a friend and owner of the antique bookstore Bílé vrány in Uherské Hradiště, contacted me. He was looking for someone to help him get into books through covid, so I worked with him for a while and learned. Well, when the owner of Knihobot said in one of the interviews, that people should set up an antique bookshop, that there was nothing easier, that there was nothing to solve,” says Karel.
When he was looking for a name for the second-hand bookshop, he wanted it to be related to the Ulité Kafé in some way, for example sonically. “And when the Wandering Books were born, the concept offered itself. Besides, it was soon after the pandemic, so I thought that if I had already created a name like that, it would be good to go out among people after cultural times and social recruitment,” recalls Karel, who last read Houellebecq’s Annihilation or the Slovak book interview with Martin M. Šimečka.
The selection of books is “logically tuned”
Although at first he struggled with inner inhibitions and shyness, the years spent with him and in the cafe eventually made it easier. At festivals and cultural events, you can find it somewhere between the musicians and the food very easily – usually a few people “dig” in their banana bags and end up leaving with five books of the arms they have no place to put because they didn’t. Don’t expect to take books away from the music festival.
“It’s nice and nice to see how people carry books around and read with a beer, coffee or maybe somewhere in the thick of it. I think it’s classy and cool,” he said. Karel, for whom both the selection of books and festivals and cafes “logical therapy”. “JA Pitínský once told us at Vincent’s in Luhačovice that our selection of books is ‘crazy’,” says Karel, who worked in Brno for several years as editor of the cultural and social magazine Metropolis . “Before that, I studied for years, but my stay at the universities was rather quick and bohemian,” he said.
The whole family helps him in the book business, including all the children. “The same girl was promised that one day she will own the second-hand bookshop if she has more books in her hand than her phone. But really, without their help and support, I wouldn’t have done it….” he admits, saying that at first he was worried that he would have gone over books and destroyed his relationship with them.
“That didn’t happen. On the other hand, the antique shop freed me from my addiction and fetish. It is liberating not to be tied to any book on the shelf and to take what comes to hand. Surprisingly, I like it more and And since I also like to go against the flow and the times, I wish Wandering had a roof over their heads Books one day people,” he concludes.
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