Category: book related

Ok so it’s not an airport, but another place where you often find yourself buying a book at the last minute is the railway station, so I took a wander around Euston’s W H Smith bookstore (it’s separate to the newsagent one) to see what you might be able to pick up if you’re heading to the Midlands, North West England or Scotland!

Firstly let’s take a moment for the window display for Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry, one of my favourite books of last year and now in paperback and still getting plenty of publicity and prominent placement. And yes, I know that some of this stuff is paid for sometimes, but I’ve seen displays in the indies as well (Bookends in Carlisle had one too).

This is the front and centre display as you come in – and you may notice that I’ve read three of these new releases already: Romantic Comedy, Happy Place and Pineapple Street which is quite something even for me given that they all came out in April!

I’ve read only one on the back where they’ve got the non-fiction – and although I didn’t love I want to die but I want to eat ttchbokki, I’m glad to see it getting some shelf time.

Lots of the usual suspects here – like Daisy Jones, the Richard Osmans, a stack of Colleen Hoover, some Lee Child, a load of thrillers, the big literary fiction books and the Richard Coles, but it’s nice to see The Three Dahlias in its shiny new paperback edition.

On the non-fiction front, Prince Harry’s book is still there – but so is the parody Spare Us! I’ve mentioned Femina before and I also have The Premonitions Bureau, Village in the Third Reich and Nazi Billionaires on the Kindle. But it’s very self help heavy apart from that and we know that’s not what I read very often!

It does feel like a very curated selection aimed at travellers – which isn’t a surprise – but it is a much better selection than the old W H Smith ever had – so from that side of thing I suppose the chaos and disruption while they were remodelling it all is mitigated a little!

And so this is the third bookshop I visited in the first week of March – walking from work to the Cockpit for John Finnemore took me right past Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street so how could I resist?

And if you’ve never been in there, it’s deceptively big. Double fronted and going right back and down and up as you can see. They were setting the event space up as I was wandering, but sadly I was insufficiently vigilant to check who it was for – partly because I knew I couldn’t stay!

Anyway here’s a nice big selection of crime hardbacks and paperbacks – including a few I’ve read – like Death Comes to Marlow, The Three Dog Problem, The Christie Affair, a couple of Thursday Murder Club books, the latest Rivers of London and the Reverend Richard Coles.

There was a really good selection of crime actually – here’s another side of that same pillar with another HM the Queen Investigates, the new Miss Marple short stories and the fresh Tom Hindle that I haven’t got around to reading yet because: binging stuff I shouldn’t be.

Over in the Children and Young Adult section there were loads of books proving that the dystopian future/alternative present genre is still going strong, but also this table with the Rainbow Rowell short stories and the Agency of Scandal which I own but haven’t really seen in the wild before.

And there were some good tables of non fiction too – bookshop trips are often where I find stuff I hadn’t heard about. The Patrick Radden Keefe is actually an older book of his, reissued to look more like Empire of Pain, but I think I would basically read any of the forward-facing books in this picture. I mean if I got time for it…

And finally, as you’ve already seen the book I bought in last week’s Books Incoming, this was my first sighting in the wild of the paperback of Lessons in Chemistry – on its release day no less. I’m hoping that the fact that the table looks a little bit empty is because they’d already sold so many copies!

Have a great weekend everyone and go buy a book.

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!

Honestly, sometimes it amazes me how different stores in the same chain can be. And here is a case in point. Waterstones Gower Street is the bookshop that serves the University of London and although it’s only about a seven minute walk from the Tottenham Court Road branch, it’s sometimes hard to believe they’re the same company. Gower Street has used books on racks outside, a record store in the basement and sections for remaindered books all over the place. You can often spot something in there you haven’t seen anywhere else – at least not in a physical copy.

Anyway, there’s a bit display for Monica Heisy’s book, which I already own a copy of but is now getting so much hype that I think I’m going to have to read it sooner rather than later or it’s going to hit over-hype and I’ll never get to it because I’m worried it won’t live up to it (see: Eleanor Olliphant which I still haven’t read).

And then the big display as you go in, at the bottom of the stairs is a new non-fiction book that I hadn’t see before – Red Memory by Tania Branigan, which the blurb says looks at China’s Cultural Revolution through the stories of people who were there and how the echo’s of Mao’s decade still resonate today. It looks really good and if the tbr wasn’t already so huge (and space in my suitcase quite limited) I probably would have bought it there and then. One to add to the list of potential Christmas books (yes I start that this early in the year!)

I couldn’t resist a picture of this book arch on one side of the children’s department upstairs – there’s another on the other side too – and although I know some people get really upset at books being used like this, I can totally live with it in a bookshop like this.

And then here is my favourite thing in the whole shop. A books case full of cozy crime novels – American mass market paperback ones. The sort I usually have to order in from that conglomerate. There are Cupcake Bakery, Library Lovers, Maine Clambake, Royal Spyness (technically not a cozy, but you can see it there if you look in the top left), Hannah Swenson and more. Yes I bought one. Sue me

And finally, just to demonstrate what a fabulous shop it is – there’s a whole stack of British Library Crime Classics, including a load that I’ve revived here like Murder in the Basement, Death at High Eldersham and more and if you look to the top left, you’ll also see actual paperback Amelia Peabodys. What more could you want. I nearly bought them – the only think stopping me was the fact that I already own them all on Kindle and audiobook – and I think Him Indoors would think I was crazy!

Have a great weekend everyone