Today I decided to visit the bookshops around the British Museum, Covent Garden and Leicester Square in London. I worked in this district twenty years ago so I already knew quite a lot of the bookshops. Many bookshops in this area are antiquarian or specialist. No matter how bizarre your hobbies or views you will find a bookshop in London specialising in your interests, providing you're not normal.
I much prefer using a narrowboat as a unit of measure. A standard narrowboat is about 56 feet by 7 feet and you know it's big enough to live on. Narrowboats have length and width, so there is no confusion regarding squares. So today I used a standard narrowboat as a way to measure bookshops. It worked very well.
10. Atlantis Bookshop on Museum Street has been selling new and secondhand books on magic and paganism for 97 years. The staff are very knowledgeable and helpful. The lady in the shop asked if I needed any help as I paced across the room. I said I was trying to work out how many narrowboats I could fit in her shop, and she was OK with that.
Atlantis Bookshop is about half a narrowboat or an average square living room, which means the range of titles is really limited.
The woman in the shop pointed out that there are no editions of the same book on the shelves, which is a good point.
The downstairs had been turned into a shrine room which was very relaxing and peaceful:
11. Stanford Bookshop in Covent Garden specialised in maps and travel. Ironically, it was quite hard to find because it was tucked down a back-street.
It was relaxed and quite large inside so browsing was easy. The ground floor had gift titles which had no travel connection at all and were tempting to buy:
Downstairs had lots and lots of maps and travel guides.
The size of the shop was perfect for me. Each floor was about eight narrowboats side by side. I could walk across it in about 18 paces, which was comfortable. Stanford's also has a website
12. London Book Review in Bury Place was new to me. It has been going for 17 years and stocks the books shown in the London Book Review periodical. Titles stocked are therefore new releases.
The bookshop was small (3NB spread over two floors).
13 I stumbled upon the Oxfam Bookshop in Bloomsbury by accident. It was really small, cramped but well stocked with customers. I like these bookshops that charge a standard £3 for good quality academic books - I think many students must be grateful for their presence even though academic books can quickly go out of date.
The range of books in this store wasn't great. I realised that 3 narrowboats is just not big enough for a generalist academic bookshop like this one. You can, however, buy books from Oxfam online and ask for them to be delivered to your nearest store.
Interlude.
At this point I went for a break. I went to the Plough pub for a drink. On the subject of size, their toilet was actually too small to enter without removing a leg at the knee:
14. Next I went to Foyles on Charing Cross Road. Twenty years ago Foyles would have every academic book that was currently in print, and it was therefore huge. It was tempting to look for unavailable books in the bookshop that has everything and therefore to feel smug. It still is huge, but its academic range doesn't seem so complete. It has also opened its doors to more popular books.
Providing you have the legs to climb 4 flights of stairs, it is easy to spend a lot of time in Foyles. It is organised but not too clinical. If they cover a topic they'll have two bookcases of books and not just two shelves. It had a lot of customers.
So how many narrowboats could I fit into this mammoth of a bookshop? About 128. That's a marina's worth of boats. This shows how big it is compared to Atlantis bookshop.
From Foyles I went to the really small antiquarian bookshops down Charing Cross Road.
15 Quinto & Francis Edwards was very small (less than 1NB) and had a poor selection of antiquarian books:
16. Henry Pordes was slightly bigger, but still a bit small as a generalist bookshop. It had a good selection of Art are Architecture books, and literature:
17. Any Amount Of Books was a misnomer for a bookshop. Given its size constraints it needed about Half The Amount Of Books.
The Bookshops in Cecil Court off Charing Cross Road shrunk the small sizes even smaller, whilst increasing the book prices. Many bookshops had signed first editions.
18. Goldsboro Books was one example.
19. The bookshop next to it, Peter Ellis, was too small to enter. It specialised in Illustrated History and literature.
20. Then finally I came to a bookshop that broke the rules. Tenderbooks was incredible. Tenderbooks was small like the rest, had hardly any books in it, but the books were really interesting! Teaching for People Who Prefer Not To Teach should be a classic, as should Just Another Asshole. They were very readable books.
Downstairs was more like an art gallery than a bookshop, and the books were equally good. Tenderbooks has a website.
I concluded that size matters in bookshops, but it's not the most important ingredient.
21 Watkins Books, still in Cecil Court is another esoteric bookshop, on two floors and covers subjects I didn't know existed.
22. Finally in Cecil Court, I visited Pleasures of Past Times. This very small shop is probably best visited online Everything is locked away in the shop. There are books on psychedelic drugs, old copies of Penthouse magazine, vinyl records, punk stuff, and everything that used to be exciting and on the edge of decency. It was a fascinating shop. The small terrier dog kept order.
No comments:
Post a Comment