Today I visited bookshops in Marylebone, Piccadilly and Soho. I started in the wealthy end of London. You know it's wealthy when a coffee shop is called an Epicerie and rent is around £2,500 per week.
My 23rd bookshop visit was to Daunt Books on the Marylebone High Street. The building was custom built in 1912. It is tall, long and thin. Behind the narrow front lies a space equal to two narrowboats end-to-end stacked three boats high.
Daunt specialises in travel books; not the directions but the tales of people who have travelled. Most of their collection are classified by country. If you're looking for a travel guide to Tibet it makes sense to look in the Himalayan section. But if you want to read a Le Carre spy novel about the cold war, it seems odd to search the Germany section. The biography of Sigmund Freud's daughter isn't under biographies; it's classified under Austria.
Upstairs there is a gallery about three feet away from the books. This looks nice until you have to pass another customer.
It then becomes uncomfortably intimate. Also, due to the narrow width of the gallery, if you are long-sighted and need to stand a bit away from the books to read their titles you face death from falling over the balcony.
Splat. I asked a member of staff has died from falling over the balcony. He said not.
The shop also publishes travel books.
24. Bibio is at 58, Davies Street about two minutes walk from Bond Street Tube Station. This is very convenient. Less convenient was the fact that the bookshop which opens at 10am Mondays to Saturdays does not exist. 58 Davies St is a Jewellery market. I asked one of the jewellers if he sold books. He said not.
25. Hatchards Bookshop was in Piccadilly, next to Fortnum & Mason. Their website says that it is founded in 1797 and is the oldest bookshop in London. It is by appointment of the Queen. It wasn't as posh as I feared it might be. It was actually quite nice and very big, spreading over 5 floors and totalled about 15 narrowboats.
Although the bookshop was generalist it seemed to be biased towards her interests. There was a floor dedicated to Art and Architecture.
There were also floors for fiction, children's fiction, current titles, and popular science. I got the impression that Her Majesty isn't so keen on gay and lesbian literature as I couldn't find any books on these subjects. I was also told that the shop didn't really cover academic books. It's art section was excellent though.
Next I went to Berwick Street near Tottenham Court Road. I like the Berwick Street vibe.
26. Gosh! books in Berwick Street is a good name for a graphic novel store. I expected to find teenagers thumbing through editions of The Beano or The Dandy. I was wrong. All the customers were older men browsing editions of Superman comics. Some of the smaller edition comics seemed distinctly dark and depressive and I wondered about the effects of these images on readers' minds.
27. It was quite a relief to move to Records and Books in Berwick Street. This small corner shop has vinyl records playing blues or dance music in a living-room sized shop upstairs, and in the basement it had books about Jazz, Blues, Punk, and autobiographies in shelves around the walls. The books were small print-runs from America, and most were priced at £8.
I was very happy in this shop. I had to leave before I started singing. It nearly happened.
28. Next I went to Persephone Books in Lambs Conduit, near University College Hospital. Persephone Books is a publisher rather than a bookshop. It sells its own publications at the door or online.
Persephone Books is very niche. It only publishes reprints of early 20th century female authors. Currently 132 books have been published.
29. A short walk towards King's Cross Station brought me to Gay's The Word in Marchmont Street. This has been running for 40 years and was brimming over with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transexual and queer literature. It seemed that anything not available in Hatchards was in this small shop the size of 1.5 narrowboats. The woman at the counter running the shop was very helpful. I asked if there was a need for such as shop these days as many bookshops already stock this material. She said it was definitely needed because it provided a community for the LGBTQ scene. This was an interesting point: a bookshop isn't just a place to buy things. It also brings people together.
30. My last bookshop today was Skoob Books just round the corner from Gay's The Word. Skoob is a secondhand bookshop second to none in London. It is like a library that has gone mad. I think there are more titles in it than bigger shops twice its size. There are certainly many academic books in there that I would like to have seen in Foyles but didn't, such as programming languages still in use, or counselling people in the LGBTQ community
Skoob needs more shelf space for its books. Fortunately it has a warehouse and a website where books can be searched and bought.
My 23rd bookshop visit was to Daunt Books on the Marylebone High Street. The building was custom built in 1912. It is tall, long and thin. Behind the narrow front lies a space equal to two narrowboats end-to-end stacked three boats high.
Daunt specialises in travel books; not the directions but the tales of people who have travelled. Most of their collection are classified by country. If you're looking for a travel guide to Tibet it makes sense to look in the Himalayan section. But if you want to read a Le Carre spy novel about the cold war, it seems odd to search the Germany section. The biography of Sigmund Freud's daughter isn't under biographies; it's classified under Austria.
Upstairs there is a gallery about three feet away from the books. This looks nice until you have to pass another customer.
It then becomes uncomfortably intimate. Also, due to the narrow width of the gallery, if you are long-sighted and need to stand a bit away from the books to read their titles you face death from falling over the balcony.
Splat. I asked a member of staff has died from falling over the balcony. He said not.
The shop also publishes travel books.
24. Bibio is at 58, Davies Street about two minutes walk from Bond Street Tube Station. This is very convenient. Less convenient was the fact that the bookshop which opens at 10am Mondays to Saturdays does not exist. 58 Davies St is a Jewellery market. I asked one of the jewellers if he sold books. He said not.
25. Hatchards Bookshop was in Piccadilly, next to Fortnum & Mason. Their website says that it is founded in 1797 and is the oldest bookshop in London. It is by appointment of the Queen. It wasn't as posh as I feared it might be. It was actually quite nice and very big, spreading over 5 floors and totalled about 15 narrowboats.
Although the bookshop was generalist it seemed to be biased towards her interests. There was a floor dedicated to Art and Architecture.
There were also floors for fiction, children's fiction, current titles, and popular science. I got the impression that Her Majesty isn't so keen on gay and lesbian literature as I couldn't find any books on these subjects. I was also told that the shop didn't really cover academic books. It's art section was excellent though.
Next I went to Berwick Street near Tottenham Court Road. I like the Berwick Street vibe.
26. Gosh! books in Berwick Street is a good name for a graphic novel store. I expected to find teenagers thumbing through editions of The Beano or The Dandy. I was wrong. All the customers were older men browsing editions of Superman comics. Some of the smaller edition comics seemed distinctly dark and depressive and I wondered about the effects of these images on readers' minds.
27. It was quite a relief to move to Records and Books in Berwick Street. This small corner shop has vinyl records playing blues or dance music in a living-room sized shop upstairs, and in the basement it had books about Jazz, Blues, Punk, and autobiographies in shelves around the walls. The books were small print-runs from America, and most were priced at £8.
I was very happy in this shop. I had to leave before I started singing. It nearly happened.
28. Next I went to Persephone Books in Lambs Conduit, near University College Hospital. Persephone Books is a publisher rather than a bookshop. It sells its own publications at the door or online.
Persephone Books is very niche. It only publishes reprints of early 20th century female authors. Currently 132 books have been published.
29. A short walk towards King's Cross Station brought me to Gay's The Word in Marchmont Street. This has been running for 40 years and was brimming over with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transexual and queer literature. It seemed that anything not available in Hatchards was in this small shop the size of 1.5 narrowboats. The woman at the counter running the shop was very helpful. I asked if there was a need for such as shop these days as many bookshops already stock this material. She said it was definitely needed because it provided a community for the LGBTQ scene. This was an interesting point: a bookshop isn't just a place to buy things. It also brings people together.
30. My last bookshop today was Skoob Books just round the corner from Gay's The Word. Skoob is a secondhand bookshop second to none in London. It is like a library that has gone mad. I think there are more titles in it than bigger shops twice its size. There are certainly many academic books in there that I would like to have seen in Foyles but didn't, such as programming languages still in use, or counselling people in the LGBTQ community
Skoob needs more shelf space for its books. Fortunately it has a warehouse and a website where books can be searched and bought.
So glad to see Skoob is still there! I used to work round the corner on High Holborn and spent many a happy lunch hour in Skoob. Also glad Gosh is still open - again I spent a lot of time there - the demographic then was men in their early 20's - so I suspect the same customers probably still go there now! I think I bought my first copy of Watchmen and V for Vendetta in Skoob. Yes - some of the imagery and stories are quite dark
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