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Good morning! I hope that your week is off to a great start. I have been reading a lot of books lately about bookshops, books and bookstores and I really enjoyed them so I decided to search for a few more.
Here are 10 Books for Book Lovers that you might enjoy!
We’re not talking about rooms that are just full of books.
We’re talking about bookshops in barns, disused factories, converted churches and underground car parks. Bookshops on boats, on buses, and in old run-down train stations. Fold-out bookshops, undercover bookshops, this-is-the-best-place-I’ve-ever-been-to-bookshops.
Meet Sarah and her Book Barge sailing across the sea to France; meet Sebastien, in Mongolia, who sells books to herders of the Altai mountains; meet the bookshop in Canada that’s invented the world’s first antiquarian book vending machine.
And that’s just the beginning.
From the oldest bookshop in the world, to the smallest you could imagine, The Bookshop Book examines the history of books, talks to authors about their favourite places, and looks at over three hundred weirdly wonderful bookshops across six continents (sadly, we’ve yet to build a bookshop down in the South Pole).
The Bookshop Book is a love letter to bookshops all around the world.
For so many people, reading isn’t just a hobby or a way to pass the time–it’s a lifestyle. Our books shape us, define us, enchant us, and even sometimes infuriate us. Our books are a part of who we are as people, and we can’t imagine life without them.
I’d Rather Be Reading is the perfect literary companion for everyone who feels that way. In this collection of charming and relatable reflections on the reading life, beloved blogger and author Anne Bogel leads readers to remember the book that first hooked them, the place where they first fell in love with reading, and all of the moments afterward that helped make them the reader they are today. Known as a reading tastemaker through her popular podcast What Should I Read Next?, Bogel invites book lovers into a community of like-minded people to discover new ways to approach literature, learn fascinating new things about books and publishing, and reflect on the role reading plays in their lives.
The perfect gift for the bibliophile in everyone’s life, I’d Rather Be Reading will command an honored place on the overstuffed bookshelves of any book lover.
From Hay-on-Wye in Wales to Ureña in Spain, Fjaerland in Norway to Jimbochu in Japan, around 40 semi-official book towns now exist around the world. But until now, there has been no complete directory of their location, history and charm. Book Towns takes readers on a richly illustrated tour of these captivating, dedicated havens of literature, outlining the origins and development of each community, and offering practical travel advice. Explore bustling book markets in Calcutta and Buenos Aires, and pop-up shops in old churches, ferry waiting rooms and stables. A stylish and original guide, it is the perfect gift for both book lovers and travel enthusiasts.
Books: reading, collecting, and the physical housing of them has brought the book-lover joy and stress for centuries. Fascinated writers have tried to capture the particular relationships we form with our library, and the desperate troubles we will undergo to preserve it. With Alex Johnson as your guide, immerse yourself in this eclectic anthology and hear from an iconic Prime Minister musing over the best way to store your books and an illustrious US President explaining the best works to read outdoors. Enjoy serious speculations on the psychological implications of reading from a 19th-century philosopher, and less serious ones concerning the predicament of dispensing with unwanted volumes or the danger of letting children (the enemies of books) near your collection. The many facets of book-mania are pondered and celebrated with both sincerity and irreverence in this lively selection of essays, poems, lectures, and commentaries ranging from the 16th to the 20th century.
Shaun Bythell owns The Bookshop, Wigtown – Scotland’s largest second-hand bookshop. It contains 100,000 books, spread over a mile of shelving, with twisting corridors and roaring fires, and all set in a beautiful, rural town by the edge of the sea. A book-lover’s paradise? Well, almost … In these wry and hilarious diaries, Shaun provides an inside look at the trials and tribulations of life in the book trade, from struggles with eccentric customers to wrangles with his own staff, who include the ski-suit-wearing, bin-foraging Nicky. He takes us with him on buying trips to old estates and auction houses, recommends books (both lost classics and new discoveries), introduces us to the thrill of the unexpected find, and evokes the rhythms and charms of small-town life, always with a sharp and sympathetic eye.
When Lucy Mangan was little, stories were everything. They opened up different worlds and cast new light on this one.
She was whisked away to Narnia – and Kirrin Island – and Wonderland. She ventured down rabbit holes and womble burrows into midnight gardens and chocolate factories. No wonder she only left the house for her weekly trip to the library.
In Bookworm, Lucy brings the favourite characters of our collective childhoods back to life and disinters a few forgotten treasures poignantly, wittily using them to tell her own story, that of a born, and unrepentant, bookworm.
Desperate to escape from London, single mother Lottie wants to build a new life for herself and her son Raffie. She can barely afford the crammed studio apartment on a busy street where honking horns and shouting football fans keep them awake all night. If she doesn’t find a way out soon, Lottie knows it’s just a matter of time before she has a complete meltdown. On a whim, she answers an ad for a nanny job in the Scottish Highlands, which is about as far away from the urban crush of London as possible. It sounds heavenly!
The job description asks for someone capable of caring for two…well, the advertisement says “gifted children”; the reality is more like “feral wolverines.” The children’s widowed father is a wreck, and the kids run wild in a huge tumbledown castle on the heather-strewn banks of Loch Ness. Still, the peaceful, picturesque location is everything London is not—and Lottie rises to the challenges of the job.
With the help of Nina, the friendly local bookseller, Lottie begins to put down roots in the community. Are books, fresh air, and kindness enough to heal this broken family—and her own…?
Chris works as a librarian in a small-town library in the south of England. This is the story of the library, its staff, and the fascinating group of people who use the library on a regular basis. We’ll meet characters like the street sleepers Brewer, Wolf and Spencer, who are always the first through the doors. The Mad Hatter, an elderly man who scurries around manically, searching for books. Sons of Anarchy Alan, a young Down’s syndrome man addicted to the American TV drama series. Startled Stewart, a gay man with a spray-on tan who pops in most days for a nice chat, sharking for good-looking foreign language students. And Trish, who is relentlessly cheerful and always dressed in pink – she has never married, but the marital status of everybody she meets is of huge interest to her.
Some of the characters’ stories are tragic, some are amusing, some are genuinely surreal, but together they will paint a bigger picture of the world we live in today and of a library’s hugely important place within it. Yes, of course, people come in to borrow books, but the library is also the equivalent of the village pump. It’s one of the few places left where anyone, regardless of age or income or background, can wander in and find somebody to listen to their concerns, to share the time of day. Reading Allowed will provide us with a fascinating portrait of a place that we all value and cherish but which few of us truly know very much about.
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| Book: My Autobiography |
Books are one of humankind’s greatest forms of expression, and now Book, in a witty, idiosyncratic voice, tells us the inside story. A wonderfully eccentric character with strong opinions and a poetic turn of phrase, Book tells of a journey from papyrus scrolls to medieval manuscripts to printed paper and beyond—pondering, along the way, many bookish things, including the evolution of the alphabet, the library (known to Egyptians as “the healing place of the soul”), and even book burning. With bold, black-and-white illustrations by Neil Packer, Book is a captivating work of nonfiction by one of England’s leading poets.
Once out of school, most of us read for pleasure. Yet there is another equally important, though often overlooked, reason that we read: to learn how to live. Though books have always been understood as life-teachers, the exact way in which they instruct, cajole, and convince remains a subject of some mystery. Drawing on sources as diverse as Dr. Seuss and Simone Weil, P. G. Wodehouse and Isaiah Berlin, Pulitzer prize-winning critic Michael Dirda shows how the wit, wisdom, and enchantment of the written word can inform and enrich nearly every aspect of life, from education and work to love and death.
Organized by significant life events and abounding with quotations from great writers and thinkers, Book by Book showcases Dirda’s considerable knowledge, which he wears lightly. Favoring showing rather than telling, Dirda draws the reader deeper into the classics, as well as lesser-known works of literature, history, and philosophy, always with an eye to what is relevant to how we might better understand our lives.
What have you been reading lately? If you have a favorite book about books, bookshops, libraries or anything related to books please share.
Have a great day!
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This post is awesome Elizabeth. I had no idea there were so many books about books/book shops.
I want to read them all!
I still am so joyful when I come across an independent book shop on my travels – the big box book stores just don't do it for me. We have just one remaining here and, lucky me, it's just a few minutes from my house. I love when an author comes for a reading and, in fact, Frances Mayes (of "Under The Tuscan Sun" fame and many other books on Italy) will be there this evening with her new book. If there's a spare seat left I may try to sneak in!
As a child in England my most favorite place to spend time alone was a large book shop called Smith's. I would always prefer money at Christmas or birthday so I could take the bus into town and look through books for hours until I found the perfect one to buy. For a while they were usually about ballet, ice skating, horses – all the things that were unavailable to me because they were too expensive – then later I gravitated to places in the world I hoped some day to visit. Fortunately that happened and I've seen more countries and special places on the 7 continents than I ever dreamed about!
Reading a chilling somewhat gothic tale now. Don't read many ghost stories but this one is really great, with a historic twist, and for the first time in memory it scared me so much one night (I read in bed) I had to put it away until the next day before continuing! It's titled "The Winter People" by Jennifer McMahon and I picked it up in the Salvation Army thrift shop along with some other interesting books – at only 50 cents each. . . . . . . so didn't have to wait for birthday money, haha!!!!!!!
Enjoy your week dear friend.
I have noticed that in the last few years there have been fictional books set in bookstores. I've read a few of them and really enjoyed the background and setting!
Brenda
Thank you for pointing these out!
OFF TO FIND A BOOK NOW!!!!!!
LOVE the sound of the NANNY one in SCOTLAND!
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