"A few days after saying he was going to do something, Shine put up a big handwritten sign in the front window.FREE BOOKS
ALL YOU CAN CARRY IN 5 MINUTES
So this was what he called doing something. Giving away all the books like this was an act of such generosity and bespoke such exquisite despair that I almost fell in love with him again. Free books, like after the revolution. I wished Jerry were there to see it. The sing had an immediate effect - it's amazing the way freebies can get people moving - and the next five days were chaos. After the Globe ran a story on it, so many people showed up for their five-minute raid on the bookstore that policemen on horseback had to be called in to control the crowd, which at one point stretched all the way down Cornhill and around the comer. They came outfitted with paper bags, knapsacks, cardboard boxes, even suitcases, and they loaded up. Some people got carried away and took things they really didn't want, and in the evening after closing time the street was strewn with cast-off books. Shine went out with a paper bag and picked them all up, and the ones that weren't too damaged he put back on the shelves, ready for the next day' s stampede, and the rest he threw away. It was exciting at first, and then it was sad. It was sad to walk around the shop at night, a place where I had spent my whole life, my home really, and see all those empty shelves. "
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