Sherlock & Pages
Sherlock & Pages in Frome is an independent bookshop specializing in nature writing, conservation, and environmental sustainability. It serves as a magical (and a little mischievous) hub for those passionate about reconnecting with the natural world.
Perfect For
Anyone seeking books that inspire a deeper connection with nature, those interested in locating meaning in their lives, and anyone looking to support independent book shops.
Why You’ll Love It
Nestled in the heart of Frome, Sherlock & Pages is a tiny bookshop — of just 1500 titles — with a big ambition. Co-founder Luke Sherlock has said “My dream as a person is to have the most beautiful, soulful bookshop surrounded by stories and community.”
True to his promise, together with his partner Agathe Cavicchioli, he has created somewhere magical — and sometimes mischievous — that holds a carefully curated collection of books that mostly celebrate nature, but also bring in other areas such as conservation, folklore, history and pilgrimage.
This truly charming book shop invites you to embark on journeys — sometimes physical, sometimes of the mind and spirit, all while fostering a deep connection to the natural world.
What Makes It Special
Nature-Centered Collection – Specializing in books about nature, conservation, and environmental sustainability, Sherlock & Pages offers readers a chance to reconnect with some of the best writing about the natural world.
Community Reach – In a town that believes in maintaining its independent spirit, Sherlock & Pages foster a sense of community and shared values. They are always happy to recommend the latest titles or beloved reads when you stop by. But don’t worry if you’re not local, you can also check out their YouTube Channel
Personal Touch & Advocacy – The people behind it have created not just a platform for cherished reads, but also for the story of the joys and difficulties of running a bookshop. Making literal space in the world for the things we love can be extraordinarily hard and rewarding. Their campaigns, and honesty, around this have highlighted how important it is to support the independent spaces in our community because when we don’t, we lose them too.
The Story Behind It
Luke Sherlock and Agathe Cavicchioli, both with backgrounds in climate action and sustainability, founded Sherlock & Pages in October 2023. After experiencing an intense bout of climate anxiety, Luke sought to create a positive space for community building and discussion on conservation, including what’s past and what’s to come.
Their shared passion for nature and literature led them to establish a sanctuary where readers can explore themes of nature, conservation, and history, anything that helps us connect with the world around us in restorative ways.
The shop's tagline, "Long Live the Hedgerows," reflects its dedication to conservation and the natural world.
The If Lost Take
We love Sherlock & Pages because it’s more than just a bookshop—it’s a beacon for environmental consciousness and a kind of nature-led self-exploration. It’s clear focus feels refreshing, as it brings together stories that inspire action and reflection, encouraging us all to become stewards of the world around us, even if that means that we just start noticing it again.
Something Else We Love
Luke has also created an avid following on Instagram through his account @englishpilgrim for his pilgrimages to churches, and has written his own book on the subject: Forgotten Church: Exploring England’s Hidden Treasures.
Some Practical Details
Frome, Somerset, UK
P.S.
If you visit, make sure to pop next door to independent shop Seed and the gorgeous florist Bramble & Wild.
Beyond Books
This independent Bookshop Week, escape into the Imaginary with some of our favourite independent bookshops.
This Independent Bookshop Week (Saturday 18 June – Saturday 25 Jun), we’re celebrating some of our favourite indie bookshops. We often seek out bookstores when we’re feeling lost, even lonely, when we need a pick-me-up, when we need inspiration, and occasionally when we have that happy-just-to-be-in-the-world-feeling and want to connect with other people. Bookshops are pretty much there for us all the times of our lives.
So let’s return the favour this week and show up for them. Show them our support: Buy a book, attend an event, say hello to the booksellers and ask their advice on your next read, go on a bookshop crawl. Make a point of visiting your local bookshop, alone, with your friends, on a date, or with your kids (get them in the habit of bookstores early).
That way bookshops will get to stay around, making our lives and communities just that little bit better.
Here are our picks this week for Independent Bookshops we love and why we think they matter.
Bookbar, London
If we were a bookshop, we’d aspire to something like this: coffee on arrival, bottles of wine dotted amongst the bookshelves downstairs, spot-on curation from owner Chrissy Ryan (see the very covetable Booklists), and inspiring events that have included conversations with people like Emma Gannon and “read-dating”. To celebrate the book of the month: Akwaeke Emezi’s You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, Bookbar even played host to a pop-up nail bar. Where “books are social”, this is a place to seek out all the things: connecting, learning, or most crucial of all belonging
With a cause: This one’s all about community: even their Loyalty Card supports books for the local school, Ambler Primary.
To do: Get some bibliotherapy with Shelf Medicate Prescription and Consultation. We’ve very much in need of the escapism offered by the G&T for the Soul Prescription. Consultations are also available for the kids in our life.
Max Minerva’s, Bristol
Every neighborhood needs its own bookstore, every community a hub for kids and grown-ups. When Jessica Paul and Sam Taylor moved into Bristol’s Westbury Park neighborhood they thought they’d found that in Durham Down Bookshop. But when the owner died in 2016, they realized that it was down to them to keep a bookstore in their community. In 2018, Max Minerva’s opened its welcoming yellow fronted space, with a built-in window seat and cozy armchair for lingering. For Jessica, “Bookshops are a comfort thing.” They also tell deeply personal stories: Named after Maxene Emily Minerva, Paul’s late 15-year-old cousin (and also the Goddess of Knowledge Minerva), the store celebrates her voracious love of reading. It’s a joyful celebration of how books are all about ‘emotion, imagination, and ways to making you think.”
With a cause: Bright orange lettering outlines a quote from Lemony Snicket: “All the secrets of the world are contained in books. Read at your own risk.” And it is the joy of reading for all, but particularly kids, that Max Minerva’s encourages by focusing on kids' literacy and creative classes that tell some of those secrets.
To do: Sign up for a children’s reading subscription, and choose between titles for Juniors aged 9 to 12 or aged 5 to 8.
The Book Hive, Norwich
Founded by Henry Layte who describes it as “someone’s home where you can buy a book. Always has, intentionally,’ The Book Hive is an irreverent indie bookstore, with a highly individualistic take on what to read. Located in a landmark building in Norwich Lanes, this is a bookstore for discovering the unexpected. Beloved by authors like Margaret Atwood (who completed her novel The Heart Goes Last in one of its upstairs rooms) and poet Simon Armitage (part of the shop’s award-winning imprint Propolis), the titles on offer are not your usual suspects, but an eclectic assortment that puts personal choice above algorithms. Similarly, the events push back on where we’re all falling down: like Page Against the Machine, a space dedicated to reading, which in itself feels radical now: coming together, detoxing from tech, and putting the world on hold by escaping into a good book.
With a cause: The Book Hive supports the work of the Norman Lamb Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund, which funds vital local, grassroots, community mental health initiatives
To do: Join the Short Short Story BookClub, which takes the much underrated short story and gives it its due with two collections mailed a month to be discussed for now on Zoom.
Support your small book store. Read something you love.
Let us know which local bookshops make your life better and which you’d recommend for our guide.
[Main photo: Photo by Pj Accetturo on Unsplash]
Pages of Hackney
A bright blue beacon on Lower Clapton Road, Pages of Hackney is one of our favourite bookstores for reading advice. Founder Eleonor Lowenthal talks to us about what makes Pages of Hackney so unique and why independent bookstores matter so much to our neighborhoods.
A bright blue beacon on Lower Clapton Road, Pages of Hackney is one of our favourite bookstores for reading advice. It’s welcoming not just in how customers are greeted and the bookstore arranged (no intimidating, fusty-ness here), but also in terms of which books get to sit on its shelves and whose stories get to be told. Founder Eleonor Lowenthal talks to us about what makes Pages of Hackney so unique and why independent bookstores matter so much to our neighborhoods.
What is it? Pages of Hackney is a small award-winning bookshop on the Lower Clapton Road selling an eclectic mix of books. Our priority is to be a friendly, community bookshop that is accessible and inclusive, supporting the issues we believe in and giving a platform to marginalised voices in publishing.
Why do people need it? Everyone should have the opportunity to have books in their lives. When I started the bookshop in 2008, there hadn't been one in the local area for 30 years and we had both children and adults coming in who weren't sure what a bookshop even was. We do our best to reflect the local community in our diverse stock choices and through our Pay it Forward scheme to also make it affordable for everyone.
What do you offer? We sell books in the areas of literary fiction, politics, feminism, essays and life writing as well as philosophy, psychology, nature writing, music and children’s books. Our priority is for each customer to feel that the bookshop is for them, and we do our best to give our customers individually as much time and thought as we can. We put on lots of events, both in-person and online, addressing issues including gender, sexuality, race and current events as well as platforming novels from established and debut authors.
What makes it different? The space is designed to feel like a sanctuary from the busy life of the High Street. Once you step inside, you're free to browse in a quiet space, talk to us and ask for specific recommendations, or simply sit in our cosy basement. What makes us different is that we aren't simply invested in selling a book to every customer, but in making everyone feel welcome and as if the shop belongs to them and is a part of their community.
What do people need to know? We are open every day for in-person browsing, but you can also order all our books online, or request anything you don't see there. We can get most books we don't have in stock in 1-2 days and can also post books and gift wrap if required.
Tell us a little about your story: Books are an excellent way to unwind, escape into, and learn about how to cope with anything people might be struggling with. Our books reflect this and the bookshop itself is a safe space in which people can reconnect with themselves and consider what is important to them.
How can people be inspired by your space wherever they are? Simply browsing our shelves, online or in person, should be inspirational, connecting people to authors and ideas that they haven't heard of, or that they might want to explore more deeply. In addition to the usual categories, we have shelves dedicated to specific subjects that might be of interest (including the Black Britain series, both Japanese and Korean writing shelves, Afrofuturism) and authors we're currently inspired by (like Joan Didion and Toni Morrison).
Where inspires you? I get inspired by talking to new people every day in the shop and exchanging thoughts, ideas and feelings.
Typewronger Bookshop & Typewriter Repair Shop
An indie bookstore, that offers typewriters repairs, origami animals and soup on Christmas Day. Founder Tom Hodges tells us whyTypewronger is far more than just a place to buy books.
“You can’t be lonely with a book - books transport you to other worlds, other places, they make you other people. Whilst immersed in a book you can only feel what’s in the pages.”
We knew we’d discovered somewhere special on a recent trip to Edinburgh when we stumbled into Typewronger on Christmas Eve and received the warmest welcome, an origami elephant, and a recommendation to read Insomniac City (subsequently stamped with their distinctive red logo and now one of our most cherished reads). Here founder Tom Hodges tells us about what makes Typewronger so distinct:
What is it? Typewronger Books is Edinburgh's smallest indie bookshop and Scotland's only typewriter repair shop! It's home to a community of readers, writers, artists & musicians and strongly advocates the written word in our daily lives.
Why do people need it? Typewronger is far more than just a place to buy books. Regulars stop in for a chat, people have built creative connections, made friends, been inspired, switched careers, written zines & started publishing companies all as a result of hanging out in this shop.
Advice & Assistance Obtainable Immediately, and there's even a Public Typewriter for those who want to just sit down and write - and don't worry about mistakes, this is TypeWRONGer where we embrace our flaws.
What do you offer? Book signings, author events, open mic nights, a YouTube channel, we flex on the 'gram & have a 1984 electric typewriter wired directly into our Twitter (yes, it types out your Tweets!)
We send books all over the world in our characteristic wrapping with hand-typed notes of your dictation, so we're perfect if you want to send a book as a gift - just drop us an email and we'll wrangle it.
We also organise the Edinburgh Zine Fair and advise new publishers on the nitty-gritty of the trade.
What makes it different? The energy is anarchic, the books hand-picked, and we're always ready and willing to engage with you on any topic. We stamp all the books with our shop stamp and give a little origami animal with each purchase. Even though we're a tiny wee store we stay open until 9 pm, we even open on Christmas Day with soup for those with nowhere else to be, and New Years Day handing out recovery Bloody Marys.
What do people need to know? Due to Covid we have a traffic light system to limit numbers and have paused our events program. We are hoping to change both of these in the coming months as cases dwindle.
Tell us a little about your story: Typewronger started when I moved back to Edinburgh in 2017 and began selling books in the street from The Leith Walk Police Box. Every Sunday a band of friends would humph all the bookshop stuff down from my flat - books, bookcases, a carpet, an armchair - the lot! In 2018 Typewronger moved into the old gallery space beside McNaughtan's, Scotland's oldest Antiquarian bookshop. In 2019 Elsa joined the team, and the shop opened 7 days a week, and in 2021 we were joined by Viv who works the day shift on a Saturday. Since opening, we've had thousands of conversations with people from all over the world.
How can people be inspired by your space wherever they are? We send books worldwide, so you can always get a bit of Typewronger sent to your doorstep. Also, we believe in physical correspondence - if you write us a letter and include your return address we will always write back to you on one of the shop's trusty typewriters.
Where inspires you? There's a wine bar upstairs.
You can't be lonely with a book - books transport you to other worlds, other places, they make you other people. Whilst immersed in a book you can only feel what's in the pages. And the feelings can be hard, but they're cathartic, and the feelings can be good, and there's all sorts of books perfect to all sorts of moods.
Anything we're missing? It's a matter of public record that the store's founder is Tom Hanks' "hero."
Discover more places for life in our Guidebook
The Center for Fiction
A space dedicated to bringing fiction into the world, that supports our real lives as it does so.
What is it: For book lovers of all ages, whether those who love to read or those who love to write, The Center for Fiction celebrates fiction in all its stages, from first imaginings to beloved reads. Over 200-years after it was founded — originally as the Mercantile Library — the non-profit moved into its public-facing home in Brooklyn’s Cultural District in February 2019. Over 18,000 square feet across three floors, architects BKSK have created the conditions to make words come alive and to enter our lives in a multitude of ways.
Why you’ll love it: Browse the independent bookstore (with a focus on fiction, works in translation, and independent publishers), chat books in the café and terrace bar, attend workshops, events, writing groups, and seminars, or sit at a writing station to get down to the actual work of crafting your own story.
The Center is a living organization that grows both readers, from the youngest kids exposed to its workshops (see its Kids Read and Kids Write programs), and writers, from the earliest stages of their careers, such as the Emerging Writers Fellowship and First Novel Prize. Within its quote-strewn walls, books can be experienced at every point in their realization.
What you need to know: The Center is also home to a circulating library of over 70,000 books focused entirely on fiction, including a prominent crime fiction collection that goes back to the early twentieth century.
How to bring this into your life: Recently retired Executive Director Noreen Tomassi started a bibliotherapy program, that is still going strong, called A Novel Approach, which prescribes a year’s worth of fiction reading depending on your situation, your interests, your longings.
Why we think it matters: Though books are read alone, often they come alive when experienced together. The Center pivots on this duality. It offers a place of solace and reflection, a retreat, or maybe just a pause, from the noise and encroachments of modern living. And it sets up the connections between readers, to not just enliven narratives through discussion but to offer an antidote to our loneliness, and a comfortable excursionon for introverts. Books can take us inwards while opening up our worlds. We can hold fiction in our minds, and those stories can have a life that exists in conversation. The Center for Fiction attests to the importance of making physical space in the world that supports our imaginary one, bringing people together over words that connect.
In their own words: “The Center for Fiction, founded in 1820 as the Mercantile Library, is the only organization in the United States devoted solely to the vital art of fiction. The mission of The Center for Fiction is to encourage people to read and value fiction and to support and celebrate its creation and enjoyment.”
Something to inspire: How can you lift words off the page and live them in company, wherever you are? Seek out a writing community, a book club, an author’s talk, a book festival, an independent book store, a library. The Center is a one-stop-shop for the craft of fiction, but parse out its functions and you’ve got a version of your own making, slightly spread out but highly tailored to your world.
Book-ish
For curiosity seekers, book lovers, and those looking for an escape into ideas, Crickhowell’s Book-ish makes a community out of reading.
“Reading gives us somewhere to go, when we have to stay where we are.”
What is it: An award-winning bookstore – Independent Bookshop of the Year Award 2020 — situated in an award-winning town — Crickhowell officially has one of Britain’s best High Streets, Book-ish was founded by an award-winning local high street hero Emma Corfield-Walters in 2010. Likes all good bookstores there’s a person behind it who believes in its capacity to be the heart of a community.
What you need to know: When the pandemic closed the store, Corfield-Walters (aka Mrs. Bookish) quickly got together with the female-founders of three other leading independent bookstores — Helen Stanton from Forum Books, Carrie Morris from Booka Bookshop, and Sue Porter from Linghams Booksellers — to start 4Indies, an online space that hosts author events for at home times.
How to bring this into your life: Book-ish has one of the widest range of book clubs that we’ve seen, including The Throw Away Your Television Society that delves into ever-changing themes, and The Underground for teen readers. You can sign up for a subscription service, with a book pick — non-fiction, fiction, poetry, picture book — sent out each month. (One option includes a monthly candle). Book-ish still runs an active online events calendar for when in-person is on hold.
Why we think it matters: Our favorite bookstores are those that go beyond books into the lives of our communities, enriching not only our minds and imaginations but also the relationships that bind us together. During non-pandemic times, the bookshop, with its bar, café, and events space, is a critical place to come together, to chat, to make space for ourselves. But its work goes outwards too. Corfield-Walters is a local advocate, bringing books into schools, hosting pop-ups at local festivals such as Green Man and HowTheLightsGetIn (when they are running), and serving as the co-director of the Crickhowell Literary Festival. She’s also an active supporter of community-building campaigns like Totally Locally, Fair Tax Town, and the community Corn Exchange Program. Book-ish makes space for books, but it also makes space for the people who love them too.
What next: If your pandemic fatigue now comes with reading fatigue, seek out Corfield-Walters’ recommendation to get you back to books: My Sister The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite for “its short chapters and wickedly dark characters”.
To find out more: Website / Instagram / Facebook / Twitter
Additionally, try: Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights / Pages of Hackney
Golden Hare Books
Edinburgh’s Golden Hare Books keeps the city’s literary tradition alive with its thoughtful curation.
What is it: An award-winning (Bookshop of the Year 2019 UK & Ireland) indie bookstore to warm your heart (and hands by its wood-burning stove) in Edinburgh’s village within the city, Stockbridge.
What you need to know: Founded in 2012 by Sir Mark Jones – previously the Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Museums of Scotland – this is a bookstore as curated space in both how it looks and what gets to be included. Covers face out and draw attention to great design, creating an immediate visual hook for potential readers and making objects of the books themselves.
The range of its small careful selection of books changes constantly –‘the idea is that you never visit the same bookshop twice.’ Golden Hare is known for bringing in a wide range of choices, including works in translation, books by women, and diverse children’s authors
How to bring this into your life: It’s all about the reading subscription, Postbooks, which sends a beautifully packaged fiction or non-fiction book(s) each month specially chosen for you, often around a theme, like Green Transformation, and with its own reading guide. The key difference though is that Golden Hare supports indie presses and small publishers in its choices such as Charco Press, Tilted Axis, or & Other Stories, widening your reading from the usual suspects and making sure more writers get attention from readers.
Golden Hare is also a bookstore where you can become a Member, and during usual times there is an active book club and Sunday Stories reading club for kids. Golden Hare has pivoted to the ways we now shop: click and collect, and Saturday bike deliveries.
Why it caught our attention: This is a bookstore that works hard. It does a lot. Not just in its active support of indie publishers but its reach within the local community and that of the city of Edinburgh. In 2019, Golden Hare hosted its first book festival with local partners and it co-hosts the Edinburgh Book Fringe with Lighthouse Books. Books are embedded in the cultural life of Edinburgh – a UNESCO City of Literature. It was famously here that J.K. Rowling wrote some of her Harry Potter series and Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes. Golden Hare keeps the tradition alive of supporting local voices and creating a place for the writing community.
In their own words: “We are a knowledgeable team of self-confessed reading addicts who have been selling beautiful and important books since 2012.
Our charming independent bookshop is situated in Edinburgh's Stockbridge, where you can find an ever-changing collection of fiction and non-fiction for readers of all ages. We hold close to 2000 titles covering all genres of writing from cookery to travel, from flower arranging to science fiction - and many more topics in between.”
Lost at home: It's winter where we are. Maybe there too. Cozy down with a book. Choose one of Golden Hare’s winter picks: Once Upon a River by Diana Settenfield, The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, and The Changeling by Victor LaValle. While purchasing, make a resolution not to buy from internet giants (take this resolve into the rest of 2021).
While here: Seek out Golden Hare collaborators café Lovecrumbs and Smith & Gertrude, as well as If Lost favorites the Royal Botanic Gardens and Lifestory.
Cafe Con Libros
A feminist bookstore making vital space for the stories of women and girls.
What is it: An intersectional feminist independent bookstore and coffee shop in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood.
Why you’ll love it: Café Con Libros was founded by Kalima DeSuze in December 2017 when she made real the space that she wanted to see in the world, one that could hold the stories of womxn and girls – stories which have overwhelmingly been sidelined in favor of those of male voices – for those who want, need and are open to hearing them. Though intimate, the reach of the store is wide, bringing together on its physical and virtual shelves an abundance of books by female authors (99% of the selections are books by, for, or about womxn), including those beyond the continental US and by LGBTQAI+ writers.
Why we think it matters: During normal times, Café Con Libros is very much a community space for female-identifying folx; it's somewhere to hang out and be as much as it’s a bookstore. As Kalima says, the spaces that we create are political. Who holds physical space, what that space is used for, and even the stories these places are allowed to tell has meaning on a personal and collective level. Bookstores like Café Con Libros hold not just the stories within pages that we need to hear, but stories within a place that allow for all possible futures, for nurturing relationships, for community action, and for extending our learning together. As Kalima notes: “It’s time that womyn’s stories be prioritized and that a space exists explicitly for and about womyn. So many of our spaces are male-dominated; even the ones that are created solely to be for and about womyn. My womyn only spaces have served as a healing tonic and, a reminder of whose shoulders I stand on. It’s important that more of our girls and womyn have access to such warmth and mirroring.”
How to bring this into your life: As mothers of young daughters, we’re excited by the monthly subscription boxes, which include an option for baby feminist board books for the zero to fives and emerging feminist books for kids aged five to nine. There are also subscription boxes focusing on womxn of color and for the feminists among us. You can also join one of two book clubs that meet monthly (on zoom during shut-door times): either the Feminist Book Club which focuses on a book by, for, and about womxn, or The Womxn of Colour Book Club, a reading space and conversation for womxn of color. There are also virtual read-a-longs and a monthly podcast Black Feminist & Bookish, hosted by Kalima.
In their own words: “ We value: family. community. justice. art. transparency. accountability. equity. equality. authenticity. joy. solidarity. earth. the brilliance and possibility of imperfection. love.
We respect and value the contentious history womxn of color have with the word "feminist;" the tension hold us to account to live our Black Feminist and Womanist principles in real and measurable ways. We were born from and are guided by the lush cannon of Black Feminist thought producers and activists; the space endeavors to be intersectional, inclusive and welcoming of all who stand with and on behalf of the full human rights of womxn and girls. We seek to advance and uplift stories of womxn and girls around the globe who are redefining the word feminist and feminism with every day, ordinary culturally informed acts of resistance and love.
Something to inspire: Try a reading challenge: purchase, support, and read books only by womxn, or womxn of color, or by LGBTQIA+ writers for 3, 6, or 12 months. Change your knee-jerk choices in what you’d ordinarily see or consume. Extend this challenge even further to include podcasts, TV shows, films, and music that are by, for, and about womxn. This not only helps our own understanding of the ongoing pursuit for gender equality but the choices you make in where you put your attention and your money indicates to the industries behind them – the entertainment, publishing, and culture industries – what it is you really want to see.
Black Bird Bookstore
San Francisco’s Black Bird Books sits on the edge of the world while being resolutely of its place.
“a community bookstore for all”
What is it: Black Bird Bookstore is exactly how an independent bookstore located a couple of blocks from the Pacific Ocean should look. It brings the outdoors very much in. Hinting at Cali Cabin chic, Black Bird is wooded out (in reclaimed oak and cypress) coziness — perfect for a neighborhood that in San Francisco is known for its non-warming fog blanket. There’s even an indoor treehouse reading nook complete with a twisting oak branch that our kids love to spend time in.
Why you’ll love it: Opened by Kathryn Grantham, formerly the owner of feminist bookstore Bluestockings in New York, this is a place driven by curiosity: all titles face out, are regularly changed, and tightly curated from an inclusive selection of writers. It’s all about discovery with thought out selections made from the 1000 titles across just 900 square feet of space.
What they offer (online and off): Even during shifting times, this sense of discovery is still there, only its also happening online: chose from a monthly box of curated picks such as the Bay Area Box, Poetry Box, or Cooking Box. You can also currently book a 30-minute appointment to shop alone (from 6 pm to 8 pm), which sounds like a book lover's fantasy date.
Why we think it's special: Opening an independent bookstore feels counter to all the claims that both storefronts and books don't work anymore. But Black Bird makes the case that as our lives are pushed to be experienced more and more online, physical spaces for books and people matter. It’s a bookstore driven by both curiosity and community. Leading book lovers through its titles while supporting those who share this community.
Black Bird is so much an expression of its neighborhood (there’s a high-end garden shed by local artist Jesse Schlesinger and the shelving and counter space have been designed by Luke Bartels). Even the name was inspired by one of Kathryn’s kids who noted the awe-inspiring presence of Black Birds in the neighborhood. Books connect us to worlds on the page; the bookstores that contain them to the wider world outside their doors.
In their own words: We’re borrowing the words from Ocean Vuong that Kathryn has quoted: “The way I see it, whenever someone walks into a bookstore, they are walking into the future of their cultural and intellectual life… Amazon, with its algorithms, can only show you where you’ve been, can only give you a calcified mirror of your past. In a bookstore, you get a human being who is also a mapmaker of possibility. As booksellers, you are practicing, to my mind, one of our species’ oldest arts, the art of fostering, sharing and shepherding our most vital stories into the future.”
Something to do: Be driven by curiosity about where you live. Now is the moment to spend time in one place – the place where you are. Books can take you there in ways that go beyond your local commute, your working days, the school drop off. We recently sought out guidebooks to our county, and though it's hard for us to visit the places we’re learning about, we’re layering on history that we probably wouldn’t have connected with if we didn’t need to live hyper-locally. Our block is holding our world: our social connections, our daily outings, new discoveries and narratives that haven’t involved us. What’s really around you? Who has shaped your community and how is it evolving. Where are you really? Even when doors close, lives are still open.
While there: Black Bird Bookstore sits in the middle of our favorite SF block: Stop by Trouble next door for toast and coffee, the General Store, Case for Making, and Outerlands. Then head to the sand dunes for fast runs down to the ocean.
Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights
This month, we’re finding awe and wonder in our independent bookstores. First up for booklovers and the curious, Mr B’s Emporium.
This week, in the middle of winter and at the start of a New Year that’s feeling decidedly same-y, we’re seeking wonder in the everyday. We need an antidote to All This (gestures to COVID, politics, BREXIT, homeschool, laundry, Tuesdays in January).
For us, one of the easiest ways to access awe is through bookstores. As holders of the imaginary, of knowledge and curiosity, these special places out in the world give us access to lives that we might otherwise not know and avenues in our own worlds that we currently may be unable to tread. Even during the harshest of lockdowns (hello, UK), the doors of independent bookstores may be closed, but what they contain can still be made available to us.
Over the next week, we’re going to focus on a handful of independent bookstores that help us find our way in uncertain times. Like a great café or bakery, a local dive bar or a music venue, we’re aware that we each have our go-to independent bookstores, so let us know what yours are, so we can bring them into our guide and into other people’s lives.
Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights
“Book lovers — welcome to your spiritual home.”
What is it: How bookstores look in movies, Bath’s Mr. B’s Emporium has all the delight, whimsy, and charm of a highly idiosyncratic world created especially for bibliophiles. A dream conceived on a honeymoon by newly married lawyers Nic and Juliette Bottomley, since it opened in 2006 Mr. B’s Emporium has twice been named best UK Independent bookstore and The Guardian has named it as one of the top ten bookstores in the world.
Why you’ll love it: For us, it’s the friendly staff who have an exhaustive knowledge of books and aren’t afraid to share it — every time we’re there we eavesdrop on excited conversations about much-loved recommendations — while also kinda apologizing when it feels like they may be upselling us as they get enthused about something. It’s also the magical kid’s section, with its fairytale tree and park bench corner. It’s The Imaginarium, an in-store spot for visiting writers-in-residence. It’s the fine touches: the wall of comic book pages, the winding staircase, the fireplace, and claw foot bath (book filled, of course). It's maybe also the fact that Mr. B’s Emporium is set off the main street, down an alleyway, so it feels like a find, though other book lovers have been lured this way before.
What you need to know: It’s so much about reading here: about opinions on books and chatter on authors, about bringing into your world books you may not have previously considered. The staff will gently guide you through but also leave you alone if you are more of a private browser.
How to bring this into your life wherever you are: For At-Home Times, go with their specially tailored to you Reading Subscriptions, which are like a through-your-letterbox monthly bibliotherapy session. One to save for Later (which we are), the Reading Spas – meaning a cozy tea and cake moment in the bibliotherapy room with a pile of books chosen especially for you. During All Times, watch storytime on the YouTube channel or listen to their podcast with more recommendations and meandering chats, Talking to Book People.
Why we think it matters: Books are personal but sometimes the way they are sold feels nothing of the sort. Book buying becomes transactional, with stores that pile it high, discount massively, and rotate them fast. Reading lists become bestseller lists. At Mr. B’s Emporium book-finding feels more person to person, one world brought into another, a love shared and passed on. Here books are restored as the wonders that we, and they, believe them to be.
In their own words: “Mr. B's is a beautiful, energetic and innovative bookshop on John Street in the heart of Bath. It's a bright labyrinthine space where book-related chatter and advice seems ever-present and you never know what you might encounter next, from claw-foot bath book displays to toilets illustrated by Chris Riddell.”
Something to do when this is all done: Take a bookshop tour of wherever you are (you could even attempt this virtually). See Louise Boland’s Bookshop Tours of Britain for inspiration.
While local: We recommend Landrace Bakery and Colonna Coffee, and If Lost featured places: Meticulous Ink and Magalleria.
Topping and Company
A beloved independent bookstore to escape to, even from your sitting room when necessary.
What is it: One of those independent bookstores to wander, with floor to ceiling books (complete with signature bookshelf ladders), heaving tables of the latest reads, and approachable staff.
Why you’ll love it: More than books (but there are so, so many), Topping supports writers (and their readers), with supper talks, one-day literary festivals, book signings, and reading groups.
What you need to know: There are now four of them: In 2002, Robert and Louise Topping opened the first bookstore in Ely, Cambridgeshire, in 2007 the Bath branch followed, in 2014 St Andrews and in 2019 the 4000 sq foot Edinburgh store (run by their now grown-up kids).
What they offer during whatever situation we find ourselves in: Can’t get to the shop for any reason (pandemics, life, general fatigue) you can call or go online to order books or get recommendations. You could even holler from the doorstep! Join their Signed Fiction Club or Signed Non-Fiction Club with a book a month selected by their booksellers sent your way. Some of the author events head online when regulations shift.
Why we think it matters: After some years out (children, work, smartphones), we found ourselves returning to books over the lockdown months. This after studying English Literature and always having a book in our pocket into our early grown-up years. But when doomscrolling became too much, and the world became an even heavier burden than usual to carry, we escaped into stories, into time spent curled up with a good read, into the simple pleasures of holding something in our hands that didn’t send push notifications. Books are a way back to a version of life that had been edged out by phones, click-bait, and ‘being busy’; they are an antidote to that to-do list that keeps you scrambling.
And one crucial thing to add, yes Amazon is all convenience, but it’s not all community or connection. Indie bookstores are truly some of our neighborhood’s special places — where else can you lose yourself in worlds, be led by curiosity alone, wander while forgetting what time it is? The fact that as legendary a bookshop as Paris’ Shakespeare and Company, and one as popular as New York’s The Strand have had to embark on public campaigns to save themselves, means that an even larger hole has opened up to swallow up these beloved places and we need to stop that, one book purchase at a time (you are the superhero that can save them in this analogy). Think about what you want to remain when life returns. For us, bookstores need to stay with us. There are souls are our cities (yes, we really believe that).
In their own words: Quite simply: “Explore The Universe From Your Sitting Room.”
Scrappy adventures at home
This weekend we brought the outside world indoors. Now we’re trying to bring the magic of the undomestic world home.
In a creative outburst (or desperation on day 40 of lockdown), we pitched a tent in our living room and went camping. We blew up the deluxe mattress, brought down our duvets, and hung a super bright lantern. The six-year-old asked for spooky stories, the eleven-year-old asked for more bouncing on that deluxe mattress, the forty-four-year-old husband gave up and headed for an actual bed, alone. As I fell asleep with the kids, we looked at the sky and trees through windows, snuggling into the warmth of indoor camping and our even cozier imaginations.
As we’re increasingly longing to be out in the world, we’ve also starting to think about how we can bring our favorite places indoors. We’re learning in our very scrappy way how to recreate a little of our former world’s magic in our domestic unbliss. Thrown together with whatever we have lying around the house, our manifestations at home are ungainly, un-Pinterest worthy recreations, but somewhere in our souls, they are filling an ever-growing need to be somewhere else, with you in the world outside.
We’ve noticed on social media the creeping in of festivals, discos, museums, into our living rooms, gardens, kitchens. We’re seeing a blending together of before and now, and a relentless hope that once was will come back again. For now, our attempts at capturing the spirit of where we once gathered will have to do.
Here’s our rundown of what we’re missing and how we’re, and you perhaps, are bringing places out there in here.
Cafes: Missing, missing, missing. We admit to buying a coffee maker as Step 1 of our lockdown journey (not sure there was a Step 2) and have since spent way too much time working out how to make an oat milk latte with froth (who needs to write the next NYT bestseller?). Add in Spotify’s Coffeehouse playlist, find a quirky chair at home, and nurse that coffee for 3-4 hours while trying not to make eye contact with anyone else. Maybe even throw $7 in the bin if you live in the Bay Area. You are almost, almost there.
Festivals: Can of wine, loud music, and deck chair on whatever outside space we can find. Kids running wild. We’ve nearly nailed it. The only things left are to throw mud at our tent, find the wellies, and start smoking.
Bakeries: A friend is baking cookies and cakes for distraction. Actually, everyone is baking cookies and cakes for distraction. There’s a run on flour and yeast and cultivating a sourdough starter has just become the new learning a language of lockdown. We’re also opening cookbooks like “50 most calorific things you can cook today with real sugar”, rather than “The Joy of Kale and Brown Rice”. Scents of bread baking, old school achievement, something to eat that isn’t from a can or cereal. Also comfort eating – it is a requirement to comfort eat right now. Pairs well with white wine at the end of the day. This is not the moment to diet, numb feelings yes with carbohydrates and alcohol. No one can see you anyway.
Coworking: If you live alone, sorry this one is going to be tough; you could make cut out figures as today’s art project and prop them next to your laptop while smiling at them occasionally. If you live with other people, just find any table, crowd around it, write an aspirational saying like ‘We work best together’ somewhere on a wall, and occasionally high-five each other. Points for adding name tags.
Indie cinema: Just switch out Netflix for National Theater Live, add in posh popcorn and a vodka tonic, and you’ve got the vibe.
Museum: Entry-level efforts, hang all the new creations you’ve been working on with everyone else on a wall in a pretty way. Add wall labels with cute names and give the whole thing a title (no, “Untitled” is cheating). Even better hang them on a wall outside and call it ‘Public Art’. But if you want to take it seriously, and you do, because you know ‘Art’, then follow the lead of New Jersey resident Teresa Mistretta. If you want to get super fancy, make your home into one of those experiential museums – paint your walls candy-colored (you need a DIY project right now). Even better, make merchandise in said theme to sell back to yourself.
Library / Bookstore: Those books on your shelves at home you’ve been meaning to read, now is the time to actually read them, not just wave at them. That might mean pulling I Could Pee on This off your shelves, but hopefully, you have something lying around like Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. If going for the library vibe, post them back through your front door for added return affect. If indie bookstore, make cute piles randomly around your house. For either, go crazy and curate subject areas, that only you understand – brave princesses who’ve learned to say no, self-help for the days you hate everyone, chick-lit which you basically see as the great American novel but are too ashamed to say so. You could also print a cool Indie Store name on the side of a paper bag and shop your shelves. We always wanted to own a bookstore.
Lecture series: You can be inspirational too. Watch something by Brene Brown or Elizabeth Gilbert or Glennon Doyle, then hold forth at dinner about the value of vulnerability, creativity, love. Your co-lockdown companions will appreciate your Ted Talk at the kitchen table. They might even take notes.
Safari: If you have pets, just follow them around the house for an hour, narrating their escapades. Maybe even give them a backstory that adds drama – you need an arc for this one to work. Make sure to practice a Megan Markle narrating Elephants range of emotion.
Retreat: Basically, lockdown with some sort of epiphany and hiding alone in your bedroom trying not to talk to anyone.
Places in the world – we miss you. And though our attempts to make you real in our living rooms and gardens may be naff, they’ll have to do for now. One day when we visit you again, we will shower you with love and attention and never take you for granted again. We Promise.
Parnassus Books
In Nashville author Ann Patchett gives bookstores the happy ending that they deserve.
“An Independent Bookstore for Independent People.”
At the precise moment that it felt like the end of bookstores and the victory of Amazon, author Ann Patchett jumped into the void. In 2011 when the last bookstore in Nashville closed, together with business partner Karen Hayes, Patchett somewhat counterintuitively opened a bookstore. She couldn’t quite stomach the fact that there would no longer be a place in her hometown to buy books. She was also banking on the fact that others would feel the loss and feel the same. And there was that niggling memory from long ago of wandering around Mills bookstore and finding magic within its walls. There’s a happy ending here that runs counter to the narrative that we’ve been sold; her bookstore has since thrived. The business model that we thought was broken, maybe it isn’t.
Parnassus Books is all the things you’d hope for in an independent bookstore. Shelves (perversely from closed-down Borders) of books chosen not by algorithms but by people who know, love and can recommend them, the staff who work here. Author events (a massive 250 a year) to build the connections between people who read and those who write. Storytime for children to develop a lifelong love of the printed word. Chairs to lounge in, a store dog to pet. Such was its success, that there’s a spin-off, Parnassus Books on Wheels.
Parnassus Books attests to the fact that bookstores are more than books; they go beyond words on pages to other things like getting us off screens and getting us into space with other people whether we know them or not. They allow our minds and curiosity to wander, creating safe environments to emotionally sink into. They are also community centers and empathy makers. Bookstores give us other people; books give us compassion within their pages.
The question at the heart of Parnassus Books is this: Do you want to live in a city without an independent bookstore? It’s all about choice. We have the agency to shape the towns in which we live, to share in the co-creation of the spaces that we love to spend time in. As Patchett says: “Amazon doesn’t get to make all the decisions; the people can make them, by choosing how and where they spend their money. If what a bookstore offers matters to you, then shop at a bookstore. If you feel that the experience of reading a book is valuable, then read a book. This is how we change the world: We grab hold of it. We change ourselves.”
We get to write the ending.