Happy Saturday everyone. As you know, I was in Sheffield last week watching about 35 hours of figure skating. But in the mornings before the action got started I had a lovely time wandering around the town and of course I visited some bookshops. So here we are today with one of them.
Tucked away down a side street off one of the man shopping streets is Juno Books. It’s an independent, feminist and queer bookshop, where the majority of books are by women and queer people and have a really strong focus on showcasing books and voices that are under-represented and/or marginalised. You can read their manifesto here.
It’s a really cute store and a really interesting and clearly very carefully curated selection. I saw a lot of things that I hadn’t seen elsewhere – I would definitely have bought In Love with Love if it hadn’t been in hardback and I wasn’t going to have to lug it around with me all day at the skating (don’t worry, I did buy something, more details to follow) as I had about about two miles still to walk and I already had sandwiches and drinks in my size-restricted bag (which was a shoulder back because rucksacks were banned…). Anyhow, rant over. I also hadn’t see the Crystal Jeans either – I read The Inverts a couple of years ago – and The Girls Who Grew Big looks interesting too.
I also hadn’t seen anything about the Gish Jen, which looks really interesting, as does Read Yourself Happy and Vulture. Obviously there’s more than just the tables, but it’s a small shop and it was quite busy and I do try not to be a pain when Im in a shop. But I had a lovely wander, could havebought a lot of books, resisted because of my poor shoulders. If you want to support Juno books, their bookshop.com page is here. You’ve already seen my actual purchase in last week’s Books Incoming – it is Just As You Are, which as I said in that post is a Pride and Prejudice retelling, but is set in and around a queer magazine in New York that has just been saved from closure by two wealthy lesbians.
Have a great weekend!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 