There’s so much more to a book than just reading said Maurice Sendak. If that statement needs illustrating, I can think of no better example than the film THE BOOKSELLERS.

A celebration of the psychic capacitors that are books, THE BOOKSELLERS starts at the New York Book Fair which is held every year at the Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue, New York, between 66/67 Streets.

The Armory’s 55,000 square foot drill hall, reminiscent of the original Grand Central Depot and the great train sheds of Europe, remains one of the largest unobstructed spaces of its kind in New York. A marvel of engineering in its time, it was designed by Regiment veteran and architect Charles W. Clinton, later a partner of Clinton & Russell, architects of the Apthorp Apartments and the famed, now demolished, Astor Hotel.

Like a casino, there are no clocks, no sense of time at the New York Book Fair so that browsing becomes the pastime, a passport to bibliophilia, codex coveted, index indulged, tucked into text, blanketed in publications.

Here you can hunt out a first edition Don Quixote or Casino Royale – and you might be surprised or scandalised at which tome reaps more dollars.

THE BOOKSELLERS, as the title suggests, is about the vendors of rare or antiquarian books, an eccentric brigade of bibliophiles who are keepers of the covers, a love kindled long before the advent of Kindle. There’s is a culture of books and browsers, archivists of the curious and the quirky, the tangible quality of text in our history, the visible and tactile as opposed to the invisible hand of the computer.

There’s is a preservation society populated largely by what seems central casting stereotypes but all the more fascinating and mesmerising for it.

THE BOOKSELLERS is also about dynasty, like sisters Adina Cohen, Naomi Hample and Judith Lowry, who took over the family business of Argosy Book Store from their father who had the good sense to buy the property that houses their business, ensuring endurance in trading when the book business got buffeted by the internet.

Director D W Young and producer Parker Posey, make THE BOOKSELLERS a celebration of a noble profession, an endearing, entertaining, eccentric and informative film that looks forward with optimism in this changing, digital world.