Happy Saturday! Independent bookstore week starts today *and* it’s Pride Month, so I thought Books Incoming could wait another week so that I could write about Gay’s The Word instead.
Gay’s The Word opened in 1979 and says it’s the UK’s oldest LGTB+ bookshop. It’s on Marchmont Street – just down the road from Judd Books as you head towards the Brunswick Centre, which is home to Skoob and also Brunswick Bookshop, which makes for a very easy four bookshop afternoon should that sort of thing be your jam – we know that it is mine. It’s not a big store, but it’s got a deceptively large amount of books in there, many of which I haven’t ever spotted in an actual shop before which is always a delight.
I should say that I’m annoyed with myself because I didn’t take as many photos as I should have on my two visits in the last few weeks, but hey ho, I can’t be perfect all the time. I’m particularly that I didn’t take a photo of this shelf this week – because there were definitely more biographies on there this week and this one doesn’t actually have the book that I bought on it.
I’m not a big Young Adult reader, but I have friends who are who I will be dragging down here to have a look because this is big, varied and again had loads of stuff I hadn’t seen before, even though I feel llike the algorithm serves me a lot of YA.
This is also a few weeks old – this week it had Father Material on it as well as Star Shipped, and K J Charles‘s How To Fake It In Society (which is a hard back or I would have been tempted). I’ve got the Rose Dommu on the (virtual) shelf as well as Murder at the Hotel Orient. On the top shelf, International Relations – a m/m fake dating romance with a diplomat who needs a husband to get an ambasadorial post – looks right up my street and in the middle Show Stopper – about teens at a musical theatre competition is the one I’m going to be telling my YA reading friends about. On the non-fiction side, I’m waiting for A Queer Inheritance – which is about queer lives at properties that are now run by the national trust – to come out in paperback, and I also really want to read Queen James but it’s just as chunky in paperback as it was in Hardback.
And that’s your lot for today. Go visit an indie for bookshop week, and for double points buy a book by an LGTBQ+ author. And if you’re in or around Sheffield this pride month, don’t forget Juno Books too.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 
I worked 5 minutes from there for 14 years and never ventured in, though I’ve been to Marchmont Street. Next time I’m travelling through Kings Cross, preferably though without worrying that the fascists might be around.
Have you read the newish book Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave? That features a visit to Gay’s the Word.