World bookshopper: #12 Jimbocho, Tokyo

March 20, 2017 By Ann Morgan in Asia, Post-world, World bookshopper Tags: books, bookshops, culture, Japan, reading, shopping, Tokyo, translation 7 Comments

On a recent trip to Tokyo, I had lunch with my Japanese literary agent and Mr Akira Yamaguchi, editor in chief at Hayakawa Publishing Corporation, which will be publishing my novel Beside Myself later this year. Over an array of delicious dishes of tofu, meat, fish, rice and miso soup, I decided to pick their brains about bookshops in the capital.

Both men were in agreement: I should visit Jimbocho. And so that afternoon I lost no time in following up on their suggestion.

Jimbocho is not a single shop but an entire neighbourhood devoted to bookselling. Well over 150 bookstores operate here, catering to the many enthusiastic bibliophiles for whom this city of more than 13 million people is home.

Interestingly for a society in which technology is so seamlessly integrated into many aspects of daily life – from vending-machine ordering systems in many restaurants to washroom facilities – ebooks are not very popular in Japan. Although the nation spawned the cell-phone novel, one of the earliest forms of literature to be widely enjoyed on-screen, most Japanese are apparently reluctant to buy electronic devices purely for reading. As a result, the physical book is still the preferred format for many of the nation’s readers and certainly those in the older generation.

This much is evident is in bustling Jimbocho, where crowds of booklovers throng the new and second-hand shops in search of their latest read. You can find anything you can think of here and a lot more besides.

Although the vast majority of books sold here are in Japanese, anglophone visitors will recognise many of the names and faces peering up from the covers in the shops stocking contemporary fiction. Home-grown superstars such as Murakami rub shoulders with English-language commercial giants, as well as internationally renowned authors working in other languages. Pierre Le Maitre is hugely popular: the Japanese version of his novel Alex has sold more than a million copies and it seems no mystery section is complete without him.

There are also some surprisingly niche titles in the mix. You might not expect sheep farming in the UK’s Lake District to be of much interest to city dwellers on the other side of the world, but you can find new publications on it here.

And there are instances of not particularly well-known writers from elsewhere who have an unusually devoted following in Japan.

I was particularly pleased to spot a novel by the US writer David Gordon prominently placed in one window display. In 2014, Gordon wrote a witty article in the New York Times about the surreal experience of discovering that his modestly successful debut novel The Serialist had become a smash hit in Japan. ‘You might not know me, but I’m famous. Don’t feel bad. Until recently, I didn’t know I was famous either, and most days, even now, it’s hard to tell,’ the feature begins.

But though many of the names in the contemporary-fiction sections may be familiar, the layout of the shops can take some getting used to. Rather than being arranged alphabetically by author name, paperback novels are ordered by publisher, with special tabs for famous writers. As a result, in Japan, authors are particularly reliant on their publisher having strong distribution arrangements with retailers: unless the press releasing your book has good shelf presence, your creation is unlikely to find its way into readers’ hands.

In addition, there are several sections that you would be hard-pushed to find in most English-language bookshops. As well as the extensive manga aisles – featuring strikingly large erotica sections in some stores – there are shelves devoted to a particular kind of Japanese non-fiction (known, as far as I am aware, as shinso), which is written with the aim of helping intelligent readers get to grips with particular topics and issues of the moment. Running to around 200 pages, these books are extremely popular – so much so that it is common for publishers to commission writers specially to produce them. Slender yet thought-provoking, these titles are the perfect companion for commuters braving crush hour – as are small-format versions of longer books, which are often sold split into several volumes, partly for ease of reading in tight spaces.

The new-book trade is just one facet of what Jimbocho has to offer. In fact, most of the stores and stalls you’ll see in the district offer primarily second-hand works. As varied as the titles they sell, many of these places specialise in particular subject areas. There are shops devoted to writing about music or titles from particular language groups.

Here and there, you’ll spot cardboard boxes stuffed with Western classics and contemporary bestsellers. And there are also a number of stores that carry first-edition anglophone books.

Often gleaned from house clearances, these titles offer occasionally mind-boggling insights into the tastes of some of the English speakers to have lived in Tokyo. I spent some time browsing the shelves in Kitazawa Bookstore, a wood-panelled emporium at the top of a curved staircase.

There, along with early editions of works from many famous, largely American, names – Hemingway, Melville and Stein among them – I was intrigued to encounter A History of Secret Societies, Welsh Folklore and Folk-Custom and WOG Lofts and DJ Adley’s formidable-sounding The Men Behind Boys’ Fiction.

It made me wonder if, long after I have written my last post on this blog and slipped off into virtual oblivion, a UK first edition of Beside Myself might one day find itself here, six thousand miles from home…

World bookshopper: #11 House of Prose, Dubai

December 19, 2016 By Ann Morgan in The stories Tags: books, bookshops, bookstores, culture, Dubai, shopping, translation, UAE 1 Comment

I am a little worried when I arrive at Jumeirah Plaza. The first bookshop I find – a small boxy place with transparent walls overlooking the escalators – is empty. There is nothing to it but bare shelves and a sign on the door declaring: ‘Closed. Please call again.’

Given that I have spent 40 minutes finding the mall on Jumeirah Beach Road with the help of Google Maps and a bewildered taxi driver who, when I asked him if he knew where he was going, told me rather mysteriously that he wasn’t a computer, calling again seems unlikely. I wonder if I have made a mistake picking this place to visit from the list of ‘8 Best Bookstores’ listed on LivinginDubai.org.

Luckily, before I lose heart completely, two passersby recognise my dismay and ask if they can help. When I say that I am looking for House of Prose, one points confidently to a space diagonally below us. Two minutes later, I am standing outside the reassuringly book-stuffed House of Prose, a sweet, wood-fronted place with rectangular-paned windows that looks as though it might have been more at home in Diagon Alley than in the glittering mall.

An unattributed quotation on the chalkboard on the door sets a cosy, personal tone: ‘I really like it when a second-hand book I’ve bought has an inscription inside. It makes me feel like I haven’t just purchased a story, but got a tiny piece of another person’s life as well.’

The cosy impression continues inside, where I am greeted by Diana who tells me about the store where she has worked for more than four years (‘I’m not bored yet!’ she says with a twinkle in her eye). Over its nearly two decades in the city, House of Prose has become renowned for the distinctive approach it takes to buying and selling second-hand English-language books.

When the store acquires a title, the assistant stamps the flyleaf with the shop’s mark. This enables the buyer to return the book for a 50 per cent cash refund when they have finished reading it. The volume will then be put back on the shelves to await another purchaser.

The store is able to offer this service because its staff are very selective about the titles they stock. Driven by what is likely to sell well, they generally only accept fiction by big-name authors or novels with a copyright date within the last calendar year. Agatha Christie, Diana tells me, will always find a place on the shelves, whereas little-known authors with books out a few years before are unlikely to be accepted.

Nevertheless, they are sometimes forced to draw a line when their stocks of certain writers’ works become too plentiful. Pointing out two shelves bursting with James Patterson novels, Diana explains that House of Prose is now only accepting his very latest publications for fear of getting inundated with the prolific American author’s books.

While the store’s non-fiction selection tends to skew towards sport, travel and history – I spy books about the Grand Prix and travel memoirs by Michael Palin, as well as Imran Khan’s Indus Journey and The Bombers: The Illustrated Story of Offensive Strategy and Tactics in the Twentieth Century by Robin Cross – certain more specialist genres are surprisingly popular. According to Diana, books about pregnancy and birth are always welcome. The same goes for children’s story books. ‘People will not stop having babies,’ Diana explains.

And though commercial big hitters dominate the shelves, there are some less obvious titles in the mix. You’ll spot more than a few Booker prize winners and shortlisters among the beach reads. And in the biography section books on global figures such as Obama jostle with works on less well-known (usually British) personalities, among them actors Shane Ritchie and David Jason, and the late TV presenter Roy Castle.

Translations are pretty thin on the ground – limited mostly to crime giants such as Jo Nesbø and Deon Meyer – but I do spot some Isabel Allende. I am also very pleased to find English-language versions of both my Saudi Arabian and UAE reads – even if Mohammad Al Murr’s The Wink of the Mona Lisa is filed slightly confusingly under ‘Miscellaneous’, where it rubs shoulders with Anthony Shaffer’s Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan – and The Path to Victory.

And in classics, I find the translation I decide to buy. No, not Don Quixote, although he is there (he does get around, that would-be knight-errant). I plump instead for Dostoevsky’s Memoirs from the House of the Dead. It will plug a notable gap among the Russian greats on my bookshelf – unless, of course, the next time I’m in Dubai, I decide to take advantage of House of Prose’s partial-refund returns policy and trade it in…

World bookshopper: #10 Aida Books&More, Valencia

October 21, 2016 By Ann Morgan in Post-world, World bookshopper Tags: books, bookshops, culture, reading, shopping, Spain, translation, Valencia 9 Comments

A while ago, Miguel left the following comment on this blog:

Hi Ann,

If you ever come to Valencia (Spain), I volunteer in a second-hand bookstore called “AIDA Books & more”. It is fully run by volunteers, all books are donations and all profits go to support the projects of the charity organization AIDA. The projects are mainly focused on countries like Guinea-Bissau, Bangladesh, Cambodia and more. And there are more AIDA bookstores in Barcelona, Madrid, Segovia and soon in Castellón.

You are warmly welcome!

Well, in September I spent two weeks in the city and so, one glorious afternoon when the sun shone done more warmly than we ever experience in the UK, I made my way to the shop where Miguel volunteers.

Situated north of the Jardines del Real, an offshoot of Valencia’s Jardines del Turia (one of my favourite places in the world), AIDA Books&More is in a parade of shops on the Carrer de Molinell. You wouldn’t necessarily notice it if you were walking past – indeed, the trolley of books on the pavement is so casually placed that it almost looks as though it might have been left there by a passer-by.

Once you go inside, however, it’s clear that this is a place run by booklovers. There is a buzz of enthusiasm in the air, tangible even to someone with only about 20 words of Spanish like me. What’s more, the curation of the stock is impressive, with sections neatly organised.

The place is clearly popular. When I visit, numerous customers are drifting up and down the aisles and in and out of the back room, browsing to the accompaniment of music by Elton John and the Pet Shop Boys playing throughout the store.

Second-hand bookshops can provide interesting insights into the reading habits of those living nearby because much of what they sell often comes from the collections of local people looking to downsize or declutter.

If the shelves of AIDA Books&More are anything to go by, the reading tastes of Valencians are diverse and wide-ranging. Alongside an extensive fiction section, featuring Spanish and Catalan versions of numerous international favourites, as well as regional bestsellers such as novels by Andorran author Albert Salvado whose The Teacher of Cheops I read for this project, there are a lot of areas catering to niche interests.

Chess lovers will find a table of books devoted to strategies for achieving the perfect check mate; those curious about new-age philosophies and spiritualism will discover several shelves devoted to works on this. There are bookcases holding erotica and various kinds of cookery books, as well as an extensive selection of poetry and plays.

Here and there, old editions of classic works, such as Don Quixote, peer down from ledges and window sills. And for the thrifty, sale tables offer bundles of books at bargain-basement prices. For a handful of euros Javier L. Collazo’s three-volume English-Spanish Diccionario enciclopédico de términos técnicos could have been mine.

Although I assumed there would be little else that I could read in the shop, I was wrong. In the back room, I happened upon a shelf devoted to books in English, with smaller selections of books in French and German beneath.

There were some surprises here too. Although the majority of the English-language titles were mass-market crowd pleasers, with the inevitable Dan Browns and James Pattersons cropping up several times alongside offerings by Sue Townsend, CS Lewis and Rudyard Kipling, there were some more obscure works in the mix. I suspect it might be a while before S. Kierkegaard’s Either/Or (volume II) finds its next home.

Among the smattering of works aimed at younger readers, I was delighted to find my childhood favourite, LM Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. Clearly, not far away, there was a reader after my own heart.

In the end, I plumped for VS Naipaul’s The Suffrage of Elvira, handing over the princely sum of €1 to a cheery woman at the till. She took my monosyllabic Spanish in her stride and sent me on my way with a merry smile.

I wandered back through the beautiful parks confident that if the charitable work of AIDA is carried out with anything like the enthusiasm that goes into running its bookshops, its projects are in very good hands.

Thanks for the tip-off, Miguel!

World bookshopper: #9 The Big Comfy Bookshop, Coventry

September 20, 2016 By Ann Morgan in Post-world, World bookshopper Tags: books, bookshops, Coventry, culture, reading, shopping, The Big Comfy Bookshop, World bookshopper 2 Comments

One of the best arguments for supporting bookshops as opposed to purely buying books online, is that they make unexpected encounters possible in a way that websites can’t. When you’re browsing most online retailer’s sites, your screen will be filled with a host of recommendations tailored to your buying history – a list of things that are like what you’ve liked before dictated by a sophisticated algorithm intended to maximise the chance that you’ll purchase another product.

In a bookshop, by contrast, as you wander from stand to stand, almost anything can catch your eye. You might go in looking for the latest bestselling thriller and come out with a memoir by a Norwegian lumberjack, or cross the threshold in search of a present for a friend and re-emerge half an hour later with a previously unheard of title that will keep you spellbound for the bus ride home.

In a bookshop, what you see is dictated less by your own previous choices than by the tastes and interests of those running and stocking the store. As a result, spending time in such places exposes you to more possibility and variety in the literary landscape, and can help challenge, disrupt and expand your reading habits.

As venues for unexpected encounters go, The Big Comfy Bookshop in Coventry has much to offer. Set up around two years ago after owner Michael McEntee took the brave decision to give up his day job and pursue his dream of running a wordmonger’s, the store is one of a series of quirky and creative businesses in Fargo Village on Far Gosford Street. There’s a comic shop next door and a film memorabilia purveyor a few units down, as well as numerous vintage-clothing traders with stands set up around the central hall.

It’s raining the day I go, but you wouldn’t know it from the throng of people gathered in the shop. Sitting at an eclectic array of chairs and tables, sipping coffees, teas and the occasional beer, they have just heard a talk from author Kate Riordan, the speaker before me in the line up of this, the inaugural Big Comfy Literary Festival.

Riordan is still there signing copies and while she does so, I take the opportunity to explore.

Although new books by the authors speaking at the festival are on sale near the counter for the weekend, the bulk of the Big Comfy merchandise is second-hand and, as such, dependent on the tastes of readers who have gone before. The usual suspects are out in force – a formidable crop of Wilbur Smiths, James Pattersons and Patricia Cornwells rubs shoulders with US classics such as Catch-22 and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

As is often the case in second-hand shops, translations are not much in evidence. However, there are some unexpected titles in the mix. I spend an intriguing five minutes flicking through a book called How to Clicker Train Your Cat. In addition, there is an impressive spread of sci-fi and fantasy fiction.

When I ask McEntee if this reflects a particular interest of his, he tells me that it doesn’t. In fact, some 90 per cent of this section comes from a friend of his who needed to downsize his collection.

Yet, while The Big Comfy Bookshop may be beholden to others for much of its stock, the tastes of its founder and his colleagues are everywhere apparent. From playful quotations and notes bearing personal recommendations from the staff on the shelves to posters for regular folk-music evenings and a handsome array of cakes on the counter, the place is alive with an enthusiasm for creating a cheerful, cosy, ‘comfy’ space that celebrates reading.

A sense of humour is also in evidence: a Post-it note on a map of the Game of Thrones territories of Westeros and Essos hanging in the loo asks ‘But what lies west of Westeros?’

The result is a beautifully informal, friendly space where people can come to browse, chat, read and while away an afternoon. I feel very much at home while I give my talk.

And if any further proof of the welcoming nature of the place were needed, it comes as I leave. On my way out, I pass Darth Vader, who is on a break from an event at the film-memorabilia store and is popping into the bookshop for a quick cup of tea. An unexpected encounter if ever there was one.

World bookshopper: #8 Altaïr, Barcelona

July 6, 2016 By Ann Morgan in Post-world, World bookshopper Tags: Altair, Barcelona, books, bookshops, Catalonia, culture, reading, Spain, translation, travel 10 Comments

If Stanfords travel bookshop had a Catalan cousin, it would look a lot like Altaïr. On the day I go, wandering in off the Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes and away from the Sant Jordi crowds, I find myself confronted with a treasure trove for those who enjoy combining literary exploration and jet-setting.

Like Stanfords, the bulk of the three-storey emporium is given over to country-by-country sections where the curious reader or would-be adventurer can find factual books and fictional works from the regions in question. The choices can be surprising. Look up Serbia and, alongside Lago de Como (the Spanish translation of the book I read from the nation) you’ll find an English-language copy of American novelist David Leavitt’s The Page Turner. In the Scottish section, you can pick up work by French writer Jules Verne.

As in similar English-language shops, setting rather than author nationality seems to be the deciding factor in the categorisation of texts. But unlike their Anglophone counterparts, Altaïr customers seem to be willing to cross linguistic as well as national boundaries.

When it comes to the shelf labelled ‘Regne Unit’ (that’s United Kingdom to you and me), a varied selection awaits. Books by Charles Dickens feature, alongside offerings from James Herriot, Mark Haddon, Hilary Mantel and Doris Lessing. I was particularly pleased to see a copy of El Relojero de Filigree Street, the Spanish incarnation of the international bestseller by Natasha Pulley, whom I met at the Bath Literature Festival earlier this year.

The lack of translation and distribution opportunities for works from some of the world’s more deprived countries – one of the major challenges during my quest to read a book from every country – seems to hold as true in Spanish and Catalan as it does in English. While most European nations boast their own sections in the store, several African countries are lumped together in the basement with only maps and factual histories by foreign writers to represent a number of them. By contrast, feted authors such as the Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz have their own mini-sections.

International publishing challenges notwithstanding, the shop must be applauded for the range of its selection. In the section marked Kosovo – a fiendishly difficult nation to find any work in English from – I was delighted to discover Travels in Blood and Honey by Elizabeth Gowing, a British translator, NGO worker and beekeeper, who has lived and worked in the country for much of the past decade.

And the offering doesn’t stop at country-by country. If you’re interested in mountains, you’ll find an area catering for that. If the polar regions capture your imagination, you can while away a good hour or so browsing the explorer memoirs on display. There is an impressive array of photography books, a handsome wall of maps, a collection of publisher-specific stands from which classics by global notaries such as Ferrante, Carver and Marquez can be snapped up, and a swathe of bookcases devoted to the latest smash hits – thrillers and tearjerkers ripe for stuffing into your backpack to beguile those long-haul flights.

Meanwhile, for those who prefer the world to come to them, there are cases of trinkets, scarves and ornaments from different corners of the globe. In addition, Catalonians keen to add a bit of local polish to their English without getting on a plane have the option of resorting to the intriguing volume Laura Lips en habla como los Ingleses.

This comes with a word of warning, however: when I flick through, I find a few rather eccentric suggested phrases. In particular, attempts to describe a scolding as ‘a tongue-lashing’, to tell someone to ‘keep your hair on’ or to say that ‘my computer is having a bad hair day’ would be more likely to make most native English speakers I know raise their eyebrows rather than invite you down the pub for a pint.

It seems there are some aspects of travel with which books can’t quite compete…

World bookshopper: #8 Voltaire & Rousseau, Glasgow

May 14, 2016 By Ann Morgan in World bookshopper Tags: books, bookshops, culture, Glasgow, Scotland, shopping, translation 6 Comments

I was up in Scotland a few weeks ago as a guest speaker at a Gliterary Lunch, alongside Laura Barnett, author of The Versions of Us. If you haven’t heard of Gliterary Lunches – and particularly if you’re a bookloving professional woman in the UK with female clients to entertain – you might want to check them out. It was certainly one of the most fun and interesting events I’ve been involved with.

As Glasgow’s Grand Central Hotel is rather a long way from my flat, I decided to travel up the night before. This left me an hour or so to play with on the morning of the event. And what better way to fill the time than with a jaunt to one of the city’s many intriguing bookshops?

After a bit of research online, I plumped for Voltaire & Rousseau, described as an ‘established secondhand store selling academic books, fiction, literary criticism and rare editions’. And while many Glaswegians made their way to work through a beautifully sunny morning, I betook myself to Kelvinbridge to see what I could find…

When I first arrive in Otago Lane, I worry that I must have taken a wrong turning. The place does not look terribly promising: a cobbled back street flanked by rather battered buildings, on most of which, the shutters seem to be pulled down. A small sign reading ‘Voltaire and Rousseau’ is the only thing that stops me from turning round and retracing my steps.

On reaching the entrance, I find that the shop is in fact open. The door stands ajar, sporting a notice that informs me that all the books in the first room cost a pound a piece or less.

This might sound like a steal for bibliophiles, but, stepping over the threshold, I quickly realise that if the shop sells all these books, it will make a lot of money. The room is packed with stock. Not only are the shelves heaving – titles wedged in to fill almost all available space – but books are heaped up waist-high on the floor, leaving only a narrow walkway. It is as though a tidal wave of reading matter has swept through the building, silting every nook and cranny up with stories.

There are paperbacks with creased spines and hardbacks from decades past. The obscure and the literary jostle with the mass market. Forgotten Edwardian novels rub shoulders with the likes of Sebastian Faulks and Stephen King; Anthony Trollope makes small talk with Agatha Christie and Henning Mankell.

Indeed, the room is so full of books that there is space for very little else, beyond a ladder to help intrepid customers reach those titles teetering on the top shelves, a coat stand, part of a table and a couple of cardboard boxes that must have got caught up in the book tsunami, and a few pro-independence posters tacked up here and there. ‘Scotland. The only country in the world that found oil and got poorer. VOTE YES‘, reads one.

Wandering through, I find that the shop’s main room is similarly stuffed to the gunnels. A man nods hello to me from a counter heaped with books (I presume there is a till hiding in there somewhere). I look around the space and it dawns on me that the hour I have is not even going to be enough to scratch the surface.

Still, I forge on. As I wander between the stacks, glancing up, down and sideways, it becomes apparent that there is a degree of order here. At some stage, the shelves have been divided into sections, with yellowing handwritten signs explaining what each of them is supposed to contain. There is the ‘Classic literature’ bookcase, which boasts an impressive array of secondhand hardbacks, and an area devoted to Greek and Roman greats. You can find shelves dedicated to ‘Cookery’, ‘Irish history’, the ‘American civil war’ and even musical scores – I narrowly avoid kicking a Christmas Oratorio on my way past.

Over time, however, as subsequent waves of books have washed in, the categories have been challenged and in some cases compromised, presumably as the need for spaced trumped the desire for order. I wonder with a chuckle what Dante, Copernicus, Newton and Einstein would make of finding themselves in what seems to be the ‘Crime fiction’ section, as they do here. Perhaps the owners of Voltaire & Rousseau know something I don’t.

Although anglophone literature dominates, there are translations swirled through the mix for those with the patience to look for them. As in many secondhand bookshops, which often reflect the reading habits of previous book buyers, the crime section has one of the strongest offerings, with the usual Scandi suspects well-represented. You’ll find foreign visitors in the literary fiction section too – I spy a Lampedusa and an Anne Frank, along with Deireadh An Fhoghair (or The End of Autumn, as someone has helpfully written on its cover in black biro), a Gaelic-language title by Tormod Caimbeul.

Inspired by the proud Scottish-nationalist bent of the owners, I decide to see if the store has any books by Gaelic writers that I can read in English. The man at the counter advises me to look for Fiona Macleod. After a few minutes of scouring the Scottish literature section, I find two battered hardbacks bearing the name, a secret pseudonym of the Glaswegian writer William Sharp.

As I queue up to pay, the phone rings. The man behind the counter roots it out from under a heap of books and conducts a lengthy conversation, during which he arranges to go and inspect the library at a house that is being emptied somewhere in the city.

Soon, it seems, there will be another wave of titles pouring into Voltaire & Rousseau.

World bookshopper: #5 Word on the Water, London (various locations)

March 12, 2016 By Ann Morgan in The stories Tags: books, bookshops, bookstores, culture, London, reading, translation, travel 9 Comments

So far, I’ve had to go to all the bookshops I’ve featured in this series. But this week, a bookshop came to me.

I was doing some work for a client in Haggerston in east London, a stone’s throw from the Regent’s Canal. The weather’s been pretty miserable lately, so I decided to take advantage of a dry spell to go for a lunchtime walk beside the water in the company of an audiobook (Natasha Pulley’s The Watchmaker of Filigree Street – such an enjoyable listen).

No sooner had I ventured onto the towpath than I heard it: orchestral jazz drifting over the water, lending the Watchmaker a jaunty backing track. Once I’d walked over a humpback bridge, it came into view: a barge topped with a sail-like canopy and bristling with shelves of books. I knew what it was before I was close enough to read the sign outside: this was Word on the Water.

I’d heard of London’s only floating bookshop before. Chuntering up and down the Regent’s Canal for the past six years, it has become something of a (shifting) local landmark. There was a petition to save it when it lost its mooring last year (the campaign won and the barge will soon be moving to a permanent site near Granary Square).

In fact, I’d even seen it once or twice during my time working at the Guardian offices near King’s Cross in 2012. Back then, I’d been too absorbed in reading and blogging about one book every 1.87 days to be able to spare the time to venture aboard.

Luckily, this week was a different story.

An eclectic array of secondhand titles awaits me on the shelves and ledges on the outside of the boat. The Illustrated Guide to Egyptian Mythology rubs shoulders with a book about Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief. There are novels by Anne Enright, William Faulkner, Will Self, Annie Proulx, Sena Jeter Naslund and Dave Eggers. Studies in European Realism, a biography of Federico García Lorca and Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City Bombay peer up at me, while the obligatory Jo Nesbø stares out from a shelf. Things are kept simple by a flaking sign, which informs me that all paperbacks are £3 or two for a fiver.

Inside, the arrangement of the barge’s deceptively extensive stock is more regimented. The fiction bookcases run alphabetically, with a separate section for classics. Meanwhile, the Harry Potters have a shelf all to themselves, nestled beneath a window, through which I watch a shoal of learner canoeists windmill past.

Small though it is, the bookbarge feels homely and inviting. There is a corner sofa on which you can imagine whiling away an hour or two as the woodburner crackles nearby (sadly, I don’t have this luxury, being on my lunch break).

Quirky antiques and ornaments nestle in odd spaces: a typewriter here, an old telephone there. Up near the entrance, a statue of the Buddha presides over the steps down into the belly of the barge.

As is the case with many secondhand bookshops that rely on the cast-offs of anglophone readers, who often don’t read many translations, for their stock, the selection of books originating from other languages isn’t massive. However, I do happen upon Nick Caistor’s translation of The Hare by Argentine writer César Aira in the fiction section.

What Word on the Water may lack in international literature, however, it easily makes up for in passion. When I go to pay for the Aira, co-owner Jonathan Privett talks warmly about his experience co-running the barge. He tells me that sourcing titles from charity shops and house clearances is one of his favourite parts of the enterprise, and that he wouldn’t change his 20 years in the book trade for anything – even if the rewards are rarely financial.

‘I love doing this,’ he says. ‘If it was about making money, I would have got a job.’

Before I leave, Jon kindly poses for a photo with his dog, Star, who has been punctuating our conversation with some enthusiastic barks as she waits for Jon to play fetch with her on the towpath.

As I climb out of the boat, he invites me to come back and do a reading from my novel, Beside Myself, sometime. I might just have to do that.

Then again, perhaps Word on the Water will come to me…

World bookshopper: #4 Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights, Bath

March 5, 2016 By Ann Morgan in Europe, World bookshopper Tags: Bath, books, bookshops, bookstores, culture, reading, shopping, translation, travel, writing 14 Comments

Picture a classic, old-fashioned bookshop: square-paned windows, handsome wooden bookcases, lots of nooks and crannies in which to escape into stories. Now imagine that this space has been given over to a lovable eccentric with a penchant for rare and quirky things.

If you concentrate hard enough, what you come up with may be something approaching Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights. That’s the bookshop I found myself in this week. And it is quite simply one of the most charming wordmonger’s I’ve had the pleasure of visiting to date.

Mr B’s is in Bath, a handsome city in south-west England that was the site of elaborate Roman baths and became a popular spa town in Georgian times (many of Jane Austen’s characters frequent the place). Like St George’s in Bermuda – the home of my previous World bookshopper store – it’s a World Heritage Site.

I was at Mr B’s to meet six other novelists, all of us published by Bloomsbury, in advance of a joint event we were doing at the Bath Literature Festival. I was excited to chat to these writers – among them Natasha Pulley, author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, David Savill (They are Trying to Break Your Heart), Ali Shaw (The Trees – such a great premise) and Paul M M Cooper, who wrote the achingly beautiful River of Ink. But the shop was so fascinating that, while the others made their introductions and swapped anecdotes about their journeys, I found myself irresistibly drawn away to explore its three floors.

There were unexpected delights round every corner. An antique Remington typewriter perched nonchalantly on a step. One wall of the staircase up to the top floor was papered with pages from a comic. A bath filled with books nestled under one of the windows. In the basement, the ceiling was covered with cloth tote bags from other indie bookshops around the world.

But perhaps the crowning glory was the upstairs Bibliotherapy Room, an idyllic space, complete with a complimentary coffee pot and a modern take on a roaring fire (a clever, gas-fired gizmo, glazed in so as to keep the books and their prospective buyers safe). No doubt, had one of Austen’s heroines wandered in from the narrow street outside, she would have felt right at home whiling away an hour or two here.

This attention to detail is backed up by a rich and full selection of merchandise, with sections including ‘Books about Books’, ‘Graphic Novels’, ‘Food & Drink’ and a case of ‘Livres, Bücher, Livros’ (titles in French, German and Spanish).

The extensive fiction section bristles with tempting translations, alongside anglophone big hitters. The usual suspects are there – Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 hovers a shelf above a rabble of Jo Nesbøs, while a Sofi Oksanen stares up winningly nearby. Nobel laureates are out in force too, with strong showings from Orhan Pamuk and Naguib Mahfouz.

However, the selection is easily broad enough to allow for new discoveries. I was particularly pleased to spot a handwritten staff recommendation for Danish author Carsten Jensen’s We, the Drowned. Although this book was hailed as an instant European classic when it was published a few years back, I had not come across it before (needless to say, it is now on my lengthy to-read list).

This sort of personal touch is Mr B’s strongest suit of all. While I am browsing, several customers come in and ask for particular titles or genres. The staff respond enthusiastically, revealing not only extensive knowledge of the bibliouniverse, but also a profound love of books. As I listen, I discover a little heart-shaped wire frame on the wall, full of cards on which visitors have recommended their favourite books – titles by Helen Dunmore, JK Rowling, Brady Udall and Richard Yates all feature.

Clearly, Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights is not just a place to buy books, but to share and cherish them too. Small wonder that in 10 years of trading, it has twice been named the UK’s Independent Bookshop of the Year.

Do pop along if you get the chance.

World bookshopper: #3 The Book Cellar, St George’s

February 29, 2016 By Ann Morgan in Post-world, World bookshopper Tags: Bermuda, books, bookshops, bookstores, reading, review, shopping, The Book Cellar, travel, World bookshopper 6 Comments

If you want to go to The Book Cellar in Bermuda, you have to pick your moment carefully. The first time I visit this store, located in 265-year-old Tucker House on Water Street in St George’s, it is shut.

According to the owner of the shop next door – which is open that day – this is not unusual. Many of the businesses in the historic settlement of St George’s – a UNESCO World Heritage Site said to be the oldest continuously inhabited English town in the New World – keep part-time and sometimes unpredictable hours. In fact, that week the business owners were due to be having a meeting about it to see if they could agree a joint opening schedule that would help create more consistent buzz around the town, which has suffered since cruise ships stopped visiting this end of the island.

Luckily for me, the Bermudian friends I was staying with know Kristin White, the owner of The Book Cellar. After an exchange of emails, Steve and I make arrangements for a return visit at a time when we are certain the store will be open.

Kristin is just setting up as we arrive, pushing back the shutters to reveal a sign promising ‘Books’, ‘Toys, Gifts & Souvenirs’, ‘Art’ and, intriguingly, ‘Oddities’. She welcomes us warmly and it immediately becomes apparent that, while her shop may keep part-time hours, Kristin’s love of stories and the community of St George’s is a full-time, wholehearted commitment.

As well as running the bookshop, with local poet Yesha Townsend, Kristin is development director of the St George’s Foundation and the town’s cultural tourism manager. She stars in a weekly ghost tour she created to bring some of the place’s 400 years of history to life. In addition, she writes creative non-fiction, and recently masterminded a historical murder-mystery evening at a nearby restaurant, using a scandal that took place in the town several centuries ago.

While I wander around the shop, she is constantly greeting customers, talking to fellow business owners and waving to people passing in the street.

Kristin’s creativity and enthusiasm are strongly reflected in The Book Cellar. Its two, small rooms are crammed with fascinating stories and objects, and there are several works by local artists on display.

Up on the shelf near the doorway into the second room, an old hardback volume stands, fanned open with the word ‘Love’ carved into its pages. On a table nearby, a newspaper-wrapped oblong promises the purchaser a ‘Blind Date with a Book’ for the bargain price of $5. Whoever is bold enough to buy it will know only that the package contains ‘Young adult fiction perfect for readers of adventure & action’ – until they hand their money over.

Although the selection of new books is very small, it is eclectic. Alongside various poetry volumes, as well as Suzanne Finamore’s Split: A Memoir of Divorce, Cheat: A Man’s Guide to Infidelity and Greg Kading’s sensational-sounding Murder Rap: The Untold Story of the Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur Murder Investigations, I am pleased to see a number of translations, including Jenny Erpenbeck’s Visitation and Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

When I remark on this to Kristin, she tells me that, when she took over the store four years ago, her aim was to focus on international fiction, as it is a particular interest of hers. The stock is low at the moment, but she and Yesha plan to reassess and bring in some more books in the coming months, with several trips to literary events abroad on their wish list.

Meanwhile, The Book Cellar’s second-hand section is thriving. You can almost hear the shelves in the back room groaning under the weight of the titles stacked on them. And although the selection here is fairly mainstream and anglophone – a lot of James Pattersons, Dick Francises and Stephanie Meyers, some Anne Fadiman, a Tom Wolfe and two copies of Bill Clinton’s My Life – there are some more unusual finds to be had. Over by the window, Steve spots the gekiga manga Path of the Assassin by Japanese writer Kazuo Koike and artist Goseki Kojim.

Back in the new books section, I settle on Ways of Dying by the South African writer Zakes Mda. I take it to the till and pay as Kristin tells me about plans she has for two further tours in the town – one to do with food and the other, a bicycle trip.

‘When people ask me what I do, I say I sell story,’ she says. ‘St George’s main export is story.’

Back on Water Street, walking down towards the main square, where even now a ducking-stool juts out above the water showing where town gossips used to be dunked in the sea (and re-enactors still get wet from time to time), I can’t help thinking she’s right.

NEW SERIES World bookshopper: #1 Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, NYC

February 5, 2016 By Ann Morgan in Post-world, World bookshopper Tags: books, bookshops, bookstores, culture, literature, reading, shopping, translation 22 Comments

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Late last year, I asked for your help. I was planning a trip to New York City and wanted to know which bookstores you thought I should visit while I was there.

As ever, the response was impressive. Suggestions flooded in for intriguing wordmongers all around the Big Apple.

There were more than I could hope to hit in a month, let alone during the few days I was going to be in town. Nevertheless, despite the blizzard’s best efforts, last week I managed to get to five of the shops you recommended in Manhattan. And I enjoyed the trips so much that I’ve decided to write up my visits in a series of World bookshopper posts on this blog – a kind of mystery bookshopper review, if you will. (See what I did there?)

I’m hoping this will become a regular feature (in fact I’ve already visited three bookstores in another soon-to-be-revealed part of the world and plan to write about those too). So, if you have a favourite bookshop in your neck of the woods –wherever that might be – why not tell me about it below?

Who knows? Perhaps I’ll stop by one day.

In the meantime, let me introduce the subject of my inaugural World bookshopper review: Housing Works Bookstore Cafe at 126 Crosby Street, Manhattan.

This was a recommendation from Grant and, when I looked it up, the store’s premise intrigued me. Established a decade or so ago, the shop deals entirely in donated merchandise. Its profits go to support Housing Works, a charity set up to tackle homelessness and support those living with HIV/AIDS.

What’s more, the place is run almost exclusively by volunteers. As Elisabeth Kerr, my editor at Liveright/Norton, told me when I met her for coffee after my trip to the shop, these unsalaried booksellers come from a huge variety of fields. Now and then, you might even be served by folk from inside New York’s publishing scene, who are eager to get a taste of life on the literary market’s front line.

On the day I went, the shop was busy. Nearly every table around the cafe counter at the far end was taken up with people chatting over coffee, cake and – more often than not – piles of books. Elsewhere, customers milled around the wood-lined space, browsing the shelves, tables and trolleys, and climbing up the curving metal staircases to the galleries above.

The titles were arranged in sections that you might expect to see in any number of bookshops – literary criticism, comics/graphic novels, health and so on. However, there were some more unusual shelves too. I was particularly taken with the ‘Cool & Quirky’ stand, which offered vintage editions of such classics as Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Chessmen of Mars and Doc Savage’s The Terror in the Navy for the bargain-basement sum of $3 a pop.

Knock-down prices were by no means the rule, however. In glass cabinets near the front of the store, rare editions commanded three-figure price tags. I spied a signed, uncorrected proof of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas for $150 and an early edition of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for a cool $300.

Curious to see what sort of presence international and translated fiction had in this shop made up of donated, second-hand reads, I made my way to the general fiction section. I searched in vain for many of the usual suspects. No Haruki Murakami or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie met my gaze here, although I did see a copy of Chilean-American author Isabel Allende’s Portrait in Sepia.

Moving to crime, I found more surprising gaps and inclusions. The great Scandi godfathers of gritty whodunnits, Jo Nesbø and Stieg Larsson, were conspicuous by their absence, but there were several copies of Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind.

And though the work of the most famous Larsson was not represented, a novel by another writer with the same surname stood in its place: Sun Storm by Åsa Larsson (translated from the Swedish by Marlaine Delargy), winner of Sweden’s Best First Crime Novel award.

It was a snip at a little over $6. Intrigued, I hurried it to the counter and handed over my money to the smiling, grey-haired volunteer there. For all I knew, she might have been a publisher, a schoolteacher or an astronaut the rest of the time.

You get the feeling that, at Housing Works, the bookshelves aren’t the only source of fascinating stories…

Picture by Crystal Luxmore on Flickr

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