What a book to end the year on! I finished reading The Bookshop Book the day before New Years Eve and I absolutely loved it. Charlotte gifted it to me entirely randomly during our Secret Santa and the gorgeous cover and its' amazing subject matter meant I had to start reading it pretty much immediately. The end of the year was a fantastic time to finish it as now I feel like I have justification for wanting to visit as many bookshops as possible this year. After reading about so many amazing bookshops throughout the world, I also decided to extend my 'read 5, buy 1' resolution slightly and make it 'read 5, buy 1 from an independent bookshop'. They're incredible places and especially in Kent we really don't have enough of them left!
The Bookshop Book is written by Jen Campbell, author of that book you might have heard everyone raving about a while back, Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops and is also, according to its cover, the Official Book of Books are my Bag 2014. I will admit to still not really understanding how Books Are My Bag operates despite now owning their official book and one of the Tracy Emin tote bags (which is awesome). If anybody wants to enlighten me, please be my guest! It basically is a book about various amazing independent bookshops throughout the world, all with different defining characteristics and quirkiness. Throughout the book there are also many interviews with authors from that part of the world talking about their favourite bookshops and what their dream bookshop would be like. I pretty much just immersed myself in the book and was happily wandering along when there, on page 36, I discovered Ellie talking about her (now ex) bookshop! You can imagine how excited I was - there was much squealing and explaining to Rhys in a very high-pitched manner and generally feeling a little bit like I knew somebody famous.
A favourite discovery thanks to The Bookshop Book is The London Bookshop Map which I will now be using as inspiration pretty much every time I visit the city. Laura and I already have tentative plans in place for when she finishes her course!
Honestly, if you're at all interested in books (and if you're not, why are you wasting your time here?!) you should probably read this book.
I really need to read this book, don't I? I'm on it!
ReplyDeleteYes you really do! :-)
DeleteBooks are my Bag is basically a week-long campaign to support independent bookshops. You can buy the tote bags (or get them free even) when you buy books from an indie bookshop, and there's an official book (obviously), and parties, and bookshop crawls... The idea is just to show your local independent bookshops some love. :)
ReplyDeleteWe didn't take part in the promotions - being a second-hand bookshop and all - but the Bakewell Bookshop did, and it was so nice seeing everyone getting all excited about books in town!