Books in the wild: Bookends/Bookcase Carlisle

I genuinely had a wonderful week last week – with three bookshops visited and lots to say about all of them. I have puzzled over which order to do them in – but I’m going for Bookends because it’s not in London and it’s a bit different too. And yes, I realise that I have to get better at taking pictures of the exteriors of the bookshops I visit, but really, I’m more interested in the contents than the packaging and I always forget.

So, Bookends and Bookcase is a giant bookshop in the centre of Carlisle. Book ends is the new book section, which I didn’t take that many pictures of, and Bookcase is the most amazing second had section that spreads over the majority of the five storey building. Honestly, I spent actual hours in there. The picture above is the entry level second hand selection – with popular paperback fiction and some crime in the section that you can see here, but really it’s just a tiny fraction of what they’ve got.

And what they’ve got includes a lot of Children’s books – and I had such a happy time searching for stuff in my Girl’s Own collections. As you can see there were some Elsie Oxenhams – which I own a few of but really need proper guidance from an expert on what to buy as the series is so very, very, very weird – and plenty of Arthur Ransomes, which I managed to resist this time at least.

Then there’s a huge downstairs section of children’s books with more classic stuff (not pictured) but also a ton of newer authors too.

Also downstairs is a massive music section – featuring sheet music and basically any classical music record ever produced. Genuinely this photo doesn’t do it justice because this is just part of the record section – there are nooks and crannies filled with records that you can’t seen here and if you look very carefully at the back you can see the doorway through to the start of the rooms with the sheet music in them. It’s wild.

Also wild is the safe door at the far end of the record section which I had to include just because it was such a surprise to spot it down there.

I’m not a poetry person, but I’ve included this to show just how wide – and sometimes random – the selection is. I think if it is a poetry or a playscript you could probably find pretty much anything in there. While I was browsing a man came in asking about antique Ordnance Survey maps – and twenty minutes later I saw him at the till paying for an old OS map of Liverpool for his collection. It was amazing.

You’ll see my book haul in Books Incoming next week, so I won’t ruin the surprise – but I’ll end by saying, if you’re anywhere near Carlisle, it’s definitely worth a detour!