Campaign for Real Bookshops?

If there can be a campaign for Real Ale, or Real Bread – why not Real Bookshops?

In my quick visit to the UK to launch the Pompeii book, I’ve actually got gigs at three different – but Real – bookshops. A dying breed, in th efface of internet competition.

On Monday I am gong to sign a pile (in the hope they sell) at Hatchards, one of the few surviving Real Bookshops in central London (the LRB shop, in the picture, is another).

On Thursday I got off the plane to go to a party at Heffers, still surviving in Cambridge. We all hope that Heffers is coming through its 3 for 2 phase, and its coffee shop taking up as much space as the whole Classics department. The new second hand mezzanine – visit it, or sell your surplus to them  --  is a great white hope. And for me, the Classics department at Blackwells who took over Heffers a few years ago, and might just spread the ‘philosophy’,  is the great white hope.

Blackwells in Oxford passes most of the tests for a Real Bookshop,. In the Classics Department: a) you can sit down, and b) you will find books there you have never seen. Better than a library.

Anyway, if people  in Cambridge wake up in 5 years time and wring their hands that there is no good bookshop in town, they will only have themselves to blame. They will have been buying off Amazon. And they’ll have forgotten that they have people in Heffers who do still know about books.

In fact, God willing, in that nightmare scenario, they will be able to take the train (or drive, if they’re not enviro-activists) to Ely.

For the big surprise of the week was going to the Topping bookshop in Ely.

I don’t go to Ely very much, honestly. When I have an elderly (usually) guest who is keen on church architecture, I will bite the bullet, forget the outrageous entrance charge to that place of worship, and take them to Ely Cathedral.

Now I have a real reason to go.

Toppings not only put on a great event in St Etheldreda’s church (complete with the desiccated hand of the Saint herself on display -- her statue's on the right), but the shop itself where I quaffed a glass of wine or two, before and after, was just like I remember bookshops used to be. That is to say, in addition to the sitting down, it displayed its books spine out (not glassy face), and there were all kinds of signs of personal knowledge and enthusiam about the stock.

So any more candidates for Real Book Shops. I heard on Friday about one in Much Wenlock (wasn’t a bookshop there when I lived there). Any more?

The only blot on Friday night was the big Cambridge taxi company, who were supposed to pick me up and take me home at 9.15. No sign.  When I rang, they said they had put the booking ‘on hold’ because St Etheldreda’s church in Ely was not a sufficient address. Didn’t they have a map or a sat nav??

So I took an Ely cab home, which seemed to know its way around.

Comments

[Meniscus]

I like 'real' bookshops too - but if they are to survive, they will have to raise their game. I was recently in a Waterstones when I thought of a particular book that I wanted to own. I enquired at the desk and was told it was out of print, but a new edition was to be published in November. So I went home, logged in to Amazon and had a new, nice-edition hardback at a reasonable price delivered in a couple of days.

[Charles Lambert]

I was buying books in Cambridge recently, after many years away, and couldn't find two I was looking for (neither of them particularly esoteric) in Heffers. I then came across a branch of Borders, where Woolworth's used to be (I think), and found them both. It's sad that Heffers should be outdone by Borders, though I imagine you can get a reasonable cup of tea there. (And I did take advantage of the loo.)

[John]

Not to convert this comment board into a broken record, but Barter Books in Alnwick is tantamount to true happiness.

[kath]

A few years ago I found that standard classical texts (Greek as well as Latin) were much cheaper in Italy than in England. These included parallel texts with the Italian on one side of the page, rather like the Loebs. I don't have sufficient knowledge to know how good the editions were but it was great to find classical texts affordable - and pretty good for my threadbare Italian too.

[Jackie]

I am a huge fan of 'Real' bookshops, (Barter Books in Alnwick is truly wonderful) but I live in a very small town which has no bookshop at all. This is were internet shopping comes into it's own. There is also the vexed question of money. This morning I took delivery of your new book Mary, courtesy of a pre order with Amazon. The price shown on the book is £25, I paid £12.50.

[Roger Goodacre]

I find my local library in SW London a surprisingly good source of cheap books. Every weekend they cover a table with books surplus to requirements, average price about 30p. Not much classics related that I've noticed, but in recent weeks I've picked up travel books by Thesiger, Norman Lewis, Patrick Leigh Fermor and Paul Theroux, Byron by Fiona MacCarthy, plus odds and ends by Amin Maalouf, Graham Greene, Conrad, Allan Massie etc. Often in surprisingly good condition.

[boredacademic]

Foyles is excellent. I once won a pint of Guinness (actually 2 as my wife was the other half of the team) at a Belfast pub quiz for knowing it was the a largest bookshop in England (even if it isn't I still won the Guinness).

[Espen Antonsen]

I am currently in Kuala Lumpur and can tell you that it is a lot worse here. Books are wrapped in plastic paper making it impossible to flip through books that look interesting.

[Paul Potts]

Before the industrial revolution, bookshops were publishers too, and sometimes even did the printing. It could be that a reversal to that would work, aided of course by the internet.

Paulo

[Xjy]

Not the kind of thing to write to an audience of book addicts!! Bloody heavy things with next to no secondhand value. And lethal for dust allergics. And stressful. And giving rise to high blood pressure, evil temptations, catatonic paralysis, adrenalin and rage to those with little money or little time.

I remember the heaven of bookshops in the old Eastern Bloc, where you had to pay fuck-all for classics in many different languages and some of the best textbooks I've come across, not to mention bloody good records dirt cheap. Robert Weimann on New Criticism or Shakespeare, the Prague German translation of Svejk in Berlin, lots of goodies in Zagreb, opera classics in Varna...

And why oh why is Cyril Bailey's edition of Lucretius (the big one with the commentary so bloody hard to find and so bloody expensive even secondhand? I missed a relatively cheap copy here in Stockholm in the early seventies and have been weeping ever since.

Roll on a copyright-free world, universal respect for historical and cultural diversity, and print-on-order outlets in every town! Or even better, in every library!

[Eileen]

When you get back to your home away from home you'll discover that Berkeley has got lots of great bookshops--my favorite is University Press Books.

[anthony alcock]

The white hope and the black hole. The cheerfully positive and the disturbingly complex. The tinkling sounds of Russ Conway and the menacing music of Erik Satie. No need for verbs. Aporia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03WORYwzZ1M

[arindam bandyopadhaya]

There is an evil force in this world, which is against free thought and expression. We have seen it in action destroying the Libraries of Alexandria and Taxilla. Even today the force is active as exemplified by the persecution of Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen. If in some future date, maybe centuries later, if, and it is a big if, this force overwhelms the world then the books as we know them will perish. Only the e-books will survive. It is an earnest appeal to all authors to allow their books on cyberspace. The authors will indeed lose on royalty but their creations will survive.
Here in Calcutta there happens to be a row of second hand bookshops on the footpath of College Street, exuding old-world charm. Nearly two decades ago I was fortunate enough to get both the volumes on Claudius by Robert Graves at throwaway prices.

Regards

[Steve the neighbour]

Got nothing against Blackwells and Waterstones or how they continue to prosper either (save the heat - which usually means in, quick look and out for the properly thermostatted male of the species). I do get a bit antse about tripping over pseudo-bohemians littering the floor cross-legged and trying to appear engaged. Otherwise - compared to the 70's and WH Smiths -it's the mother lode in those places.

[Tony Francis]

Boxer Jack Johnson was the first person prosecuted under the Mann Act. The Mann Act makes it a federal crime to transport a woman across state lines for purposes of prostitution. Jack Johnson was prosecuted for transporting a white prostitute from one state to another. Hypothetically, the recently resigned New York governor could have been charged with violation of the Mann Act. Probably, a deal was struck. The Wiki article indicates federal prosecutors are still investigating to determine if a crime was committed.
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_Act
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Spitzer

[PL]

The phrase "the great white hope" described each of a series of white boxers who tried unsuccessfully to take the heavyweight championship away from Jack Johnson. When he defeated Tommy Burns in Sydney in 1908, Johnson -- to the consternation of many whites including the socialist Jack London -- had become the first black to hold the title.
The (frankly racist) hope was finally fulfilled in 1915, when Jess Willard knocked Johnson out in the 26th round of a fight in Havana.
The Wiki article includes some interesting sidelights:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Johnson_(boxer)

[mary]

Sharon... I was using it in the sense of "the greatest hope for future success"...
As I write I fear it has some terrible racist origins.

[Sharon]

Hi Mary, can i just ask...what does great white hope mean exactly?

[Q.H. Flack]

In supporting the Campaign for Real bookshops may I propose that a real bookshop is to stock books in languages other than English in sections other than literature.
And perhaps someone can explain why NO bookshop in the UK is half as good as those found in Boston, Chicago, New York, Berkeley etc...
One could, of course condemn the odd publisher, including the owners of that large warehouse beside Cambridge station.

[Ray Hobbs]

[a] Alnwick... fantastic
[b] Heffers in Cambridge... v. good, but the coffee shop is always at some tropical temperature.
[c] I have been surprised/disappointed at the dinky number of secondhand bookshops in Cambridge... am I missing some out-of-the-way ones?

[D. Smith]

Mary Beard makes tantilising reference to ‘the tests for a Real Bookshop’, mentioning just two, the ability to sit down, and the presence of books one has never seen. Most branches of Waterstone’s fit those criteria, but I suspect her notion is to promote independent bookstores (as long as they have a Classics department, of course). I would fully support a campaign for real bookshops (and would like to hear more of her criteria). The Guardian launched something similar in 2005, but it was short-lived. In 2007 a movement called Love Your Local Bookshop was initiated, but since their website is not responding and I have not heard anything of it for over a year I presume this is similarly defunct.

As the author of the bookshops chapter of the Time Out Shopping Guide (2007 and 2008, forthcoming), I can tell you categorically that dozens of excellent bookshops still exist in London, providing excellent service and unique, personalised selections of books. I’ll list some of the best ones below (excluding Hatchards and LRB, already mentioned, and the consistently-excellent Foyles).

First I’d like to take issue with a couple of points made in the article. Prof. Beard refers – with a slight note of contempt? – to a ‘3 for 2 phase’ and a ‘coffee shop taking up as much space as the whole Classics department’. This presupposes that a bookshop’s first duty is to sell books: it is not. Any shop’s primary duty is to make enough money to survive and generate enough profit to pay its staff. Numerous decent London booksellers have had to close over the last few years and many of those that have survived can put their success down to the flexibility and fresh-thinking of their owners. Take some room away from the Classics department to make room for a bright, airy café with some comfortable sofas and customers will stay for longer, spend more money, leave with pleasant memories – and come back. Even if, God forbid, books’ covers are displayed and not just their spines (a most bizarre criticism!). Surely any tactics successfully employed by independent bookshops to attract and retain potential Amazon customers should be lauded.

Real bookshops in London cover a massive range, from special-interest vendors to local all-rounders. In the latter category, a new opening this year was the Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green, a democratic effort whose inception was entrusted to local residents. They chose the décor, the stock emphasis and even the name. John Sandoe in Chelsea remains one of our all-time favourites at Time Out, while the Kew Bookshop mixes intelligent literature with a large children’s section. No doubt the latter’s ancient Greek section is minimal, but is it any less a real bookshop if it helps introduce Kew’s many young people to reading? A real bookshop should understand the needs of its clientele.

As for covering areas of special interest, London has Gay’s the Word, Bookmarks (the socialist bookshop) and women’s-interest Persephone. They have all survived difficult economic times in the last two years, but are still going strong – Persephone even opened a new branch this year. Stanford’s and Daunt Books remain unparalleled for travellers, and it would take far too much space to list here London’s wonderful second-hand and antiquarian bookshops (though I’ll mention Skoob, a personal favourite, and the shops along Cecil Court, off Charing Cross Road).

A campaign for real bookshops? Something that the TLS should consider perhaps. Better yet, why not open your own? The London Review Bookshop is, after all, one of the very best in the capital.

[Michael Bulley]

For those who don't know it, here is the Cambridge bookshop song, sung to the tune of Frère Jacques:

Heffer's Bookshop, Heffer's Bookshop,
Deighton Bell, Deighton Bell,
Galloway and Porter, Galloway and Porter,
Bowes and Bowes, Bowes and Bowes.

[Michelle]

The difficulty with "Real" bookshops is their hours. I'd love to spend more time in Heffers in Cambridge, but the time that I have for lurking around casually in book stores is pretty much during hours where only Borders is open!

[Peter Robins]

Scarthin Books in Cromford, Derbyshire: new and second-hand, glorious profusion.

[kath]

I have two favourites that I must add to your list - both with a focus on second hand books:

Scarthin Books is in Cromford, Derbyshire. Books are everywhere and I never visit without finding something I wanted or - better still - something I'd never heard of that I really want. My finds include aome obscure Left Book Club books that adjusted my view of the 1930s, a 2-volume biography of the radical and atheist MP Charles Bradlaugh by his daughter and novels by the working-class writer Sid Chaplin. There is a cafe but it's furnished with the sort of magazines I actually want to read and no-one complains when I read the stock over coffee or one of their organic, fairly-traded vegetarian dishes (home-made - I recommend the hommity pie). I'm impressed that the loo is in a bathroom - I don't know if any browser has ever stayed long enough to use the bath but somehow it's cheering that it's there. I've never been able to attend evening events at the cafe but see that they include a cafe philosophique. http://www.scarthinbooks.com/index.shtml

It's some years since I've visited Northumberland and one of the places I miss most is Barter Books in Alnwick. It occupies the old railway station and this is recalled by a toy train which runs above the bookshelves. Surprising quotations are strung across the aisles; these include, on several placards, the whole of Hopkins' 8-line poem "A Nun Takes the Veil" ("I have desired to go/ Where springs not fail"). I watched the bookshop extend over several years in the 1990s and was pleased at the introduction of coffee and cookies (in those days the system was help yourself with honesty box) to sustain my browsing. It's a shop big enough to merit an all-day visit. I've made many great finds there - the best was an anthology of Chartist writing that even the British Library didn't possess. At the time there were only two anthologies of Chartist writings, both published in Eastern Europe; this was the Russian anthology with decent English texts (good enough for me to source originals) but introduction and notes in Russian. There's good light reading too - ideal for holidaying browsers - and a music room which, in the 1990s at least, included a piano so that visitors could try out the sheet music on sale. At the time I was very glad of the well-equipped children's room (there's one at Scarthin Books too). http://www.barterbooks.co.uk/shop.php

For new books, the London Review Bookshop, which you mention, has become my favourite although it's so small. The staff are splendidly knowledgeable and helpful and the mix of books I want and books I didn't know I wanted is such a temptation that I have to make stern resolutions before entering. And the jasmine tea deserves a special mention. If I lived nearby I'd be bankrupt by now.