Turn up for the books

This Saturday is Bookshop Day – why not pay yours a visit?

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you’ll learn, the more places you’ll go.”

And the more likely you’ll be, as Dr Seuss would undoubtedly have added if it had occurred to him, to step into a store this Saturday, October 8 – Bookshop Day.

I certainly shall – for I love browsing and shopping for books. To me, a bookshop doorway is a portal to a million different universes. Why would you not want to step inside?

Any (and every) bookshop will do me, but if I could choose, it’d be an independent, one you know has been created, stocked and staffed by people who love being immersed in words. From the fictitious – Parnassus, Sempere And Sons, The Travel Book Co in Notting Hill (definitely made up – how did Hugh earn enough money running a bookshop in the priciest part of London to live three doors away?) – to the very real: Foyles, Heffers, The Second Shelf, Mr B’s Emporium Of Reading Delights: these are my people.

Books are living things – they are my friends

And the reason I love these places so much is that books they harbour, see, they are living things. They are tactile, each has a certain feel, a texture, a smell. A good book rests easily and lightly in your hands, like a sleeping baby or a purring cat – a bad one is like a restless toddler, lumpen and awkward but which you force yourself to keep carrying despite your every instinct to put it down. Not only are booksellers my people, the books they sell are my friends.

I’m delighted to say I’m not alone. There are nearly 1,000 bookshops in Britain, according to the Booksellers Association, 160 more than there were six years ago. Waterstones, which owns Foyles and Blackwell’s, has 280 of them, including Britain’s biggest, its six-storey behemoth flagship on London’s Piccadilly. Fifty even opened during the pandemic and most have thrived partly because people rediscovered the joy of being able to browse. The worst of Covid may be behind us, but a love of reading is still infectious.

Many hold events – signings, open mic evenings, reading clubs, book-based game and film nights, character costume parties. These are great, essentially because what underpins them all is the sheer enthusiasm of all involved – a community that shares its love of books. Again, my people.

It's not the classics that makes you well read, it's discovering new authors in a bookshop

I’d even venture – controversially perhaps – that being able to quote Shakespeare, say, or Dickens, or Austen, is not what makes you well read. Loving a bookshop is. Sure, I’ve read those classics, and they've retained their power over the centuries, but everyone has already heard of them.

However, the way you discover new authors, new books, groundbreaking ideas, innovative genres, how you really expand your reading horizons, is by entering a bookshop.

I read about 30 books a year, the old and the new, but my all-time favourites list increasingly includes classics published in the last 20 years: The Book Thief; Behind The Scenes At The Museum; Never Let Me Go; The Amber Spyglass; Where The Crawdads Sing; The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time; Anxious People; The Shadow Of The Wind; and, better even than all of these wonders, Ian McEwan’s Atonement.

Of course some of these I learned of through word of mouth or the media. But some I just simply picked up. Because I walked into a bookshop.

I’m fortunate that both my parents enjoyed reading and my dad loved bookshops, so I’ve been wandering in and browsing since I was a child. Even now I still remember exactly when and where I was first drawn to the best ever children’s book, The Phantom Tollbooth – on a shelf in an independent bookstore in 1970s Essex. While all my teachers were forcing me towards the hallucinogenic overrated gibberish of Lewis Carroll, I found for myself its exquisite genius equivalent in Norton Juster. Because I walked into a bookshop.

And because I love books so much, I’ve even written a few along the way. Each has been slightly less terrible than the last and a couple have attracted positive attention from kind agents but none has been published. “So self-publish,” my friends tell me. “Get yourself a cover design and sell it on Amazon.” But it’s not the same because anyone can do that. It’s nothing like seeing your book take up space in a shop, having it validated by an agent, a publisher, a distributor and a bookshop owner. That would be my dream.

Read it on a page. Buy it in a shop.

But I don’t need that fantasy to enjoy a bookshop, or to recommend others do the same. Maybe you don’t think books are your thing. Or maybe you do love books but have got into the habit of clicking a “buy now” button and downloading them to read on a screen.

Either way, why not head instead for a bookshop this Saturday? Why not pick up an actual book in an actual shop – and enter one of those million other worlds?

I’ll certainly be there on Saturday, browsing, absorbing, embracing, purchasing. And then collecting a friend (or two, or six) to take home with me.

See you there?

Thanks for reading this today, I really appreciate you taking the time! I write on a variety of different subjects for a large number of clients and audiences. If you'd like to, please read more of my weekly blog here, and read more of my published articles here.

And if you'd like me to write something for you or your business, please email me at ptw@peterthewriter.org!