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18 Bookshops
This is a thoroughly researched travelogue and look at bookshops, both their history and their future. It gives the stories of 18 bookshops, some still in operation, others long ago turned into another use, and how not one is like another.
128 pages, Paperback
First published September 30, 2011
About the author
Anne Scott
77 booksFor Sir Walter Scott's, daughter, see Anne Scott
Anne Scott lectures in literature and has also been a BBC Scotland broadcaster and occasional writer for The Scotsman and The Herald in the 1990s. She studied at Edinburgh and married there, and her son, Mike, is a successful song-writer and musician.
When she was nine a bookseller folded a bookmark with a red cord into her newly-purchased book and that was the beginning of her love affair with books and bookshops. Working visits to Ann Arbour and Kansas in the 1980s, and later to New York City, Dublin and Galway, helped define her professional work as an extended study of Irish and American writing. There were so many writers in Ireland and America, so many bookshops in the world, together they turned her into a searcher.
She lives in the West of Scotland.
Anne Scott lectures in literature and has also been a BBC Scotland broadcaster and occasional writer for The Scotsman and The Herald in the 1990s. She studied at Edinburgh and married there, and her son, Mike, is a successful song-writer and musician.
When she was nine a bookseller folded a bookmark with a red cord into her newly-purchased book and that was the beginning of her love affair with books and bookshops. Working visits to Ann Arbour and Kansas in the 1980s, and later to New York City, Dublin and Galway, helped define her professional work as an extended study of Irish and American writing. There were so many writers in Ireland and America, so many bookshops in the world, together they turned her into a searcher.
She lives in the West of Scotland.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 28, 2019
What makes a good bookshop? Well having books is a good start. To be serious though, a well-curated selection of different genres that are drawn from mainstream and back catalogues and staff that are readers and know and love books. But what makes a good bookshop a great bookshop? That requires a little something extra, be it the selection of books, the bookseller or just the location of the shop.
From her first bookshelf that was originally an orange box and the happy memories of going with her brother to the bookshop each Saturday where he bought a Penguin paperback, Anne Scott has always had a thing about bookshops. In this beautifully produced volume, she has picked 18 of her favourite bookshops that she has developed a relationship with over her years.
They are mostly based in the around the UK, though one American one and another Irish one have snuck in, each has been chosen for a variety of reasons. Some because they were the places she discovered poets that other bookshops never even considered stocking, others have that quiet calm as if they were cathedrals to the written word. There are bookshops where the books were placed on easels, with pages opened out to show the art within and a London bookshop that sells children’s books, has ivy curling around the door and a secret garden within.
Sometimes, as here, a Bookshop may be defined forever in a life by a single found book.
I must be honest and say that I had only come across one of these bookshops, the rest were a mystery to me. But what a mystery though, Scott writes about these places in a dreamy evocative way, linking back to memories of discovering books and authors that would play a part in her life. It did make me think though about what bookshops would I include if I was choosing 18 that had made an impression on me as a reader. I really missed having page numbers, but I get why they did it, as each essay about the bookshop is short enough to read in a few minutes. If you have a thing about bookshops then I can recommend this as a book to lose yourself in.
From her first bookshelf that was originally an orange box and the happy memories of going with her brother to the bookshop each Saturday where he bought a Penguin paperback, Anne Scott has always had a thing about bookshops. In this beautifully produced volume, she has picked 18 of her favourite bookshops that she has developed a relationship with over her years.
They are mostly based in the around the UK, though one American one and another Irish one have snuck in, each has been chosen for a variety of reasons. Some because they were the places she discovered poets that other bookshops never even considered stocking, others have that quiet calm as if they were cathedrals to the written word. There are bookshops where the books were placed on easels, with pages opened out to show the art within and a London bookshop that sells children’s books, has ivy curling around the door and a secret garden within.
Sometimes, as here, a Bookshop may be defined forever in a life by a single found book.
I must be honest and say that I had only come across one of these bookshops, the rest were a mystery to me. But what a mystery though, Scott writes about these places in a dreamy evocative way, linking back to memories of discovering books and authors that would play a part in her life. It did make me think though about what bookshops would I include if I was choosing 18 that had made an impression on me as a reader. I really missed having page numbers, but I get why they did it, as each essay about the bookshop is short enough to read in a few minutes. If you have a thing about bookshops then I can recommend this as a book to lose yourself in.
June 7, 2013
Beautiful writing, but a bit hard to get into unless you have some knowledge of the writers/shops she mentions. Most of the bookshops she talks about are in the UK, Ireland, or New York City. The author is in her seventies, I think, so her tastes might not be the same as those of younger people, so just bear that in mind when deciding to read it or not. Nicely printed and bound by the publisher (although I didn't like the fact that there were no page numbers - it is only divided into 18 sections - one for each shop).
May 30, 2021
This book details 18 of the author's favorite bookshops around the world. It made for a cozy read on this cool, rainy May day.
October 11, 2012
A biography with a difference. Memoirs related through the 18 bookshops that have personal importance to the author; not just those she has visited, but historic bookshops that are important in literary history, such as the London bookshop in which Boswell met Johnson, or the Edinburgh bookshop where printed books where first produced in Scotland. A gem of a book.
January 28, 2012
Loved the personal essays, but the historical ones were a little dry.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews