Books in the Wild: very late August

I had a bit of a wander around Tottenham Court Road Waterstones on Wednesday, and I have thoughts…

Firstly, I liked the window. It’s tempting. I’ve obviously read A Fatal Crossing, but I think that’s it and a lot of the stuff there looks tempting. And it’s bright and varied and I can get on board with that.

I’m doing better on the YA table – here’s The Agathas in the flesh, and I’ve read The Gravity of Us and The Fault in Our Stars (more fool me). And there are a few things here that tempt me – but also remind me about my tbr- I want to read the first Aristotle and Dante book and I have one of the Inheritance Games books on the kindle pile.

More guilt on the fiction table – Lincoln Highway is on the Kindle TBR too. But I have at least read The Christie Affair lo. I keep picking up and thinking about Diary of a Void, but I’m not sure my brain is in the right place for it at the moment!

Here’s my problem though. All the non fiction is one giant section (see above) and adult fiction is lumped together. How am I meant to serendipitously happen across a book that will appeal to me I want to read if it’s all in one big lump? I go to bookshops to happen across stuff that the algorithm isn’t going to tell me about. Sometimes that means spotting a shelf talker for something but more often it means going to the section for the genre that I’m interested in and seeing what’s being put out on the table in front or has been turned to be front facing or is shelved with something I like. Alphabetical for all fiction just doesn’t work for me.

In the end I came away without buying – the two that tempted me were the Muriel Spark and the Sybille Bedford but they’re both classics and so I’ll see them again, and what I really wanted was to happen across something new and under the radar. Hey ho. I suppose I saved some money…