Last week I said there was more from Óbidos and so here it is!
This is the Livraria do Mercado, which is a bookshop and an organic market. I have no idea what the proportion of books to produce is when it comes to sales, but in terms of the look of the place, it’s mostly books!
I also have no idea what how the prices for the produce stack up compared to in the other stores, but it seemed to be good quality and I know I’d be happy to buy my veggies in a bookshop – after all I’ve done my fair share of book buying in supermarkets over the years, and this is definitely the better way around!
It’s mostly Portuguese books (obviously) but they have also got a section with foreign language novels – including lots of Portuguese authors in translation and, in English at least, some very random secondhand books!
You’ve already seen this one, but this is the book exchange – and this is all English books (or the vast majority anyway). It’s run by volunteers who have moved to the area and raises money for local charities. As you know, I picked up a few books while I was there!
And that’s it! Have a great weekend and I hope you have a comfy spot and a good book to read in it!
Well as you know I’ve been on my travels recently, so this Saturday and next it’s the highlights of my trip to Obidos’s bookshops… And part one is the Livraria de Santiago, because why not when it looks like this!
It’s an ex-church, it’s gorgeous and the book selection is excellent.
I mean look at it. It’s just such a nice mix of old and new, and it’s so full of books!
Here are the two ends of RF/Rebecca Kuang – do note that in Portuguese they’re both under RF Kuang.
Also there was a Mallory Towers omnibus and how could I not take a picture!
There’s also a fair few romance novels – in translation and by local authors – and plenty of YA. All in all, great fun.
And to finish, here’s the outside – which is out to keep the fact it’s a bookshop secret!
Were we in the north recently? Did I find a bookshop to visit? Did I make a purchase? Yes on all counts. And it was a delightful bookshop so of course I’m writing about it!
The Hedgehog Bookshop has two floors of lovely books and goodies. The first floor has kids books and stationery and all that sort of thing. But upstairs is where the good stuff is on a book front from my point of view.
In one room there’s a nice comfy sofa with a hedgehog cushion where you can sit and peruse your choice from what seemed like a very thoughtfully curated selection of fiction, with something for practically anyone I would have thought.
There are best sellers, BookTok picks, recent top sellers, modern classics, evergreen picks and a big old selection of crime and mystery of various types. This was not the only crime bookshelf…
And in the other room there’s an eclectic mix of non-fiction, again with something for pretty much anyone across history, celebrity memoir, cookery, the whole lot.
My purchase was a book about the history of cathedral architecture which you could see in the bonus books incoming the other week. Have a great weekend.
Following on from last week’s Manila bookshop post, I flew to the Philippines via Dubai, and on the way home I had enough time during my connection to have wander through the shops so of course I zoomed in on the books!
I was actually with impressed with the English language selection, I have to say. I think most people would be able to find something from this selection, as long as you’re happy going with something from the bestseller lists, or best seller-adjacent.
I’m pretty sure that my choice of I had needed one would have been When Grumpy Met Sunshine or With Love, From Cold World, even though I still haven’t read Love in the Time of Serial Killers yet! I had however spent some money in the bookshop in Manila and it was somewhere in the early hours of the morning, so I didn’t buy anything. Which as you know has quite an achievement for me so to can tell the long flights were affecting me!
And as a final bonus, no books but back in Manila airport there was a familiar name!
So you might have been wondering where I actually went on my trip – well here is your answer: the Philippines! Manila to be exact. And of course I found a book shop and now I’m going to fill you in on it all!
Firstly, there were watch more English language books then I B was expecting, although I don’t know why I wasn’t expecting this considering half the population speak English. Anyway – BookTok is a thing here too – I’m not surprised by that but I was surprised it’s all the same books as UK BookTok. Anyway, what we have is a stack of Colleen Hoover, Lucy Score and Tessa Bailey, plus Rebecca Yarros, Heartstopper and lots of romantasy.
More of the same on the new books table, with Once More With Feeling, even more Tessa Bailey, a boxed set of Shades of London and done horror and romantasy. The book I was interested in was Love on the Second Read by Mica de Leon. But the trouble was that it was only about 200 pages long and it was wrapped in cellophane so I couldn’t have a preview read. My usual trick in these circumstances is to have a read of the kindle sample, but I can’t even tell you how much data costs on a UK phone in the Philippines! So it’s on the list now I’m home – it’s available on kindle here, so I’m sure I’ll get to it eventually.
Lots of Julia Quinn and Elle Kennedy here – at some point I will read her – and Christina Lauren, Red, White and Royal Blue and Ali Hazelwood. The unknown to me was Krista and Becca Ritchie – who seem to have a couple of books in kindle unlimited so I may try them out.
And then this one has got even more Tessa Bailey, Colleen Hoover, Elle Kennedy and the Ice Planet Barbariabs and some more books with dark covers that suggest that I wouldn’t like them!
I did but a couple of books – but from the bargain table and by people that I knew – bravado all the other stuff was cellophane wrapped and really expensive and I was worried about paying over the odds for something I didn’t like. But I did spend about an hour in the shop!
This Saturday I’m taking the opportunity to noodle a bit about a few things I’ve spotted in my wanderings around the various bookshops. You’re welcome.
First up, this was the window display at the Euston W H Smith bookshop this week. I haven’t read Katy Brent’s debut, How to Kill Men and Get Away with It, because I’m fairly sure it’s too dark for me, but I do love the design they gave it and this second novel looks just as cool. And it’s clearly getting g a bit of a push in the shops.
This is one I spotted in my local Waterstones – I do like a Hollywood story, and I’m curious about behind the scenes at Disney, so this one has in the list of stuff I want to read just as soon as I’ve got the to read pile down a little bit!
And lastly, this was the hardback fiction tower at that same Waterstones. The books that jumped out took to me were Over My Dead Body, which has a murder victim stuck in limbo unless she can prove she was murdered; Kiley Reid’s second book because I’m curious to see how she follows the massive success of Such a Fun Age; and Sara Sheridan’s The Secrets of Blythswood Square because I used to read her Mirabelle Beavan mystery series and I’m interested to see what she’s doing now. But like the others, it may have to wait for a smaller backlog! Perhaps by the time they’re in paperback.,.
After the disappointment of the airport the other week, I was in Waterstones this week and finally there are some new books starting to appear – or at least books I hadn’t seen before…
Firstly there’s a new group biography from Paula Byrne. I haven’t read much Thomas Hardy – although I have visited some of his houses – but I’ve read and liked several of her previous books like The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym, Kick, and Mad World so it maybe that I end up picking this up at some point too.
The new Kiley Reid is also out now too. Such a Fun Age was such a sensation I’m interested to see how Come and Get It does – the cover is very pretty but it did strike me how different it is from that previous one.
I don’t think this is that new (last summer for the hardback I think) but it is in a time period that I’m interested in – this is about a former cinema director who travels across Europe with his family who include a member of Oswald Mosley’s party and a communist. I’ll have to do a bit more research before I read it because it has the potential to be grim as anything but I’m quite interested.
Speaking of Oswald Mosley adjacent fiction – I hadn’t realised Jessica Fellowes’ Mitford mystery series was still going, but apparently it is and this is the final one. I keep meaning to go back and give these another try, but the tbr pile is so very huge it just hasn’t happened yet…
And finally there was a big old display of the new Sarah J Maas – freshly released that day and which Gower Street had opened at midnight for which is why I mention it because it gave me such vivid flashbacks to my younger years!
After the disappointment of the airport last week, I have actually spotted some of the Christmas releases in the wild, so here we are with this Saturday’s post!
So to start with, thank you Sainsbury’s for being super useful, and not just for decaf coffee for my mum and dad. Their chart selection has a lot of those Christmas new releases if you’re thinking about gift buying and getting some loyalty points to help you in January! Obviously the Britney Spears memoir has had huge amounts of talk, and I’ve already mentioned the Patrick Stewart book too, but they’ve also got Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new book, Dawn French’s tour tie in, Billy Connelly and one I’ve been keeping an eye out for, Phillippa Gregory’s non fiction book about women in history. And then there’s the fiction options, with the latest batch of celebrity novels and some big names like Sophie Kinsella and Sarah Morgan.
Next acrosswe have some more of the Christmas releases – I saw Michael Palin at work the other week while he was doing the promotional trail for his book Great Uncle Harry, and David Mitchell has done a bunch of the talk shows for his book about the monarchy as has Miriam Margolyes about her latest memoir. We also have a sighting in the wild of the new V E Schwab. Then there’s the usual batch of cook books, the traditional Alan Partridge book and Clare Balding. I’ve also read a bunch of Dan Jones’s history books but haven’t read any of his historical fiction yet – Wolves of Winter of the second in what going to be a trilogy – if you’re in the US, this second one doesn’t come out where you are until January.
Next up, more cook books, plus Strictly start Johannes Radebe’s memoir and buzzy autumn release Yellowface, which I have read and didn’t love but I know lots of people who have really entered it. Plus the usual batch of best seller authors like John Grisham and Jo Nesbo. Then there’s an Anthony Horowitz James Bond and Lessons in Chemistry – the adaptation of which has just dropped on Apple TV!
The next shelf was a bit patchy, so I’m skipping it, but you can see the interesting bits in the edges of this photo and the last one – so Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and the S J Parris on the last picture and the Mary Berry baking book on this one! Finally, right down the end her we have some Colleen Hoover (because is it even a book selection without her at the moment!) plus a few more of the high selling, long running favourites. And then there’s the kids books obviously!
And that’s your lot for today, hourly is been at least somewhat useful as you plan your Christmas book purchasing – and don’t worry, I’ll have some recommendations coming up in the next few woods to!
Him Indoors is on a jolly to the Med this weekend and kindly helped me out with some photos from the airport bookshop – bless his cotton socks he only sent me three, and it’s all fiction, but he’s trying and working out what he took photos of has been fun!
So we have biggest books – which is a very strange mix of stuff, but appears to be mostly classics, literary fiction and a few odds and ends of other bits and bobs – including that latest Richard Osman in the airport paperback.
Now I’m not going to lie, this doesn’t look very different from the selection when I went away in September – which is a maybe not a surprise – because he’s gone for the actual paperback fiction shelves – not the airport special editions – so its the big authors and big paperback editions – Lessons in Chemistry, older Thursday Murder Club, Coleen Hoover, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and the Monica Heisey which appears to have been the big paperback release of the autumn – which surprised me because the hardback only came out in January.
And finally, even more paperback fiction and along with more of the same from the previous shelf, I see new Sarah Morgan, All the Light We Cannot See – which has a Netflix adaptation out this week, Babel by R F Kuang which seems to be popping up more places now that Kuang’s Yellowface is doing so well, the Secret Diary of Charles Ignatius Sancho and the new Janice Hallett Christmas mystery. From the glimpse of the airport non-fiction shelf next to it, it appears to have lots of the Walter Isaacson Elon Musk book and new Future of Geography book and potentially not a lot of the Christmas memoirs *but* Him Indoors might not have noticed them for photos – or understood the difference…
So what have we learned? Don’t rely on the airport for your big autumn memoirs, and that despite living with me (and reading some of my airport format purchases) I’m not sure Him Indoors notices that books come in different sizes!
Do you remember how excited I got only a few weeks ago about the romance section at Waterstones Piccadilly? Well I went in this week to try and find the new Alexis Hall in the wild and guess what… it had gone! They’ve reorganised it all already and now it’s smaller (I think) and at the back. The whole of that front section is now Crime and Thriller. I have no words but I do have a few pictures.
I say it’s smaller but I’m not actually sure, it just felt more cramped. The photo above is the main section and then on the left there is a Pride section – which is a mix of fiction and non fiction LGTBQIA+ books – including some Alexis Hall but not the one I was looking for!
Then the main romance bit is to the right. I don’t think it was properly set up – there were still gaps all over place on shelves elsewhere on the floor and trolleys of books too as you can see in the picture below.
I only had about ten minutes to wander around – so I couldn’t properly dig into what had gone awol, but I thought I should probably do an update as I’d been so excited about the old configuration…
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 