Bookshop Guides

AbeBooks and Amazon have opened up a world of book acquisition to me, in particular, I am able to find things online which I have always wanted, or which I find referenced in footnotes, text or conversations.  If I know what book I'm currently seeking, and it has nosed its way to the top of my next tp read list, then 9 times out of 10, online is the place to get it. But what about the authors I haven't yet heard of, the titles which have slipped through the net, the less popular (and often therefore, more interesting) editions, or even field of interest which I would just not otherwise stumble across.  The serendipitous picking of a book from shelves because it happens to be near the space which would have contained (had the bookshop had it in stock) the book I went there to seek.  The divinatory practices of stichiomancy and bibliomancy involve running a finger over a page of text at a randomly opened page in a sacred volume of some description.  Where the finger stops, the sentence or paragraph is interpreted in the light of the question being asked.

How about running your hands along a bookshelf and pulling out books at near random.  Ignore for the moment the dubious process of divining the future or answering life's questions (most of which would be best served by finding a sentence which says:"Have you thought of pulling your finger out? Get a grip!"). Instead, take your chosen text of interest, or as I said, the place where it would have been on the shelf had it been available. Scan round the area at random, pull out books that look good, nicely bound, familiar publisher, nice typeface, whatever. Skim read them.  Most books can be skimmed in about 20 seconds. Accept or reject provisionally.  Enter the bookshop knowing you will spend a nominal sum there irrespective of whether they have you exact book or not.  AbeBooks can't give you this random chance element. Walk through the bookshop, scan shelves you wouldn't normally go near.  Talk to the owner.  Some bookshops have a good feel. On every shelf there is about 20% of the contents which I already own, want to own, or will actively try to acquire.  Some bookshops have nothing.  Nothing at all. I just get a dead feeling that I really don't want anything they have. These two extremes are odd, and probably just reflect my interests, financial state or bookshelf space at the time rather than a quantitative measure of the worth of the bookshop. Anyway, try it.

The Inprint Bookshop in Stroud has a useful listing of second-hand bookshops in UK with a summary of each.  The links, below, to the bookshops of Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire comprise our 'local' stomping grounds.

Gloucestershire Bookshop Guide online

Oxfordshire Bookshop Guide online

I will vaguely try to enlarge my bookshop going habits and review one or two new shops online as I use them. I'll put links to the bookshops on the Blog sidebar.  There is a better online secondhand bookshop guide HERE, with the opportunity to submit your own comments on bookshops you have visited.

From Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, there are three which immediately spring to mind as always being worth a visit or detour.

• Attic Books in Cheltenham:  Roger, who owns and runs it,  is an excellent character, looking oddly like Gandalf or Dumbledore,  his micro-bookshop on St. James's Street (next to a car park which always has parking) has a wealth of buyable volumes.  He has good military history, novels, natural history, biography and poetry section (and much more).  His prices are knowingly more than generous and I usually have to haggle the prices up a little to feel that his kindness isn't going to put him out of business. I have no idea if anyone else does this?  It isn't that he doesn't know what he is selling, or how much it is worth, it is just that his nature ill-suits him to selling things to the public.  Become a regular here!  English eccentricity at its least commercial best.  If only he'd have a pot of coffee on in the upstairs room, I'd pay to just sit in here and talk, never mind actually buying books.  Roger obtained the moderately hard to find three volume Kilvert for me in the pre-AbeBooks days, and a Sydney Jary 18 Platoon which is strangely out of print despite its definitive account of the battle for France which was the staple reading for cadets at Sandhurst.   Online catalogue HERE, but really, GO there. Persuade him to get the coffee machine.

• Books and Ink Bookshop, Banbury: To paraphrase Saki (Reginald on Christmas Presents: "People may say what they like about the decay of Christianity, the religious system that produced Green Chartreuse can never really die"), so long as this book shop remains open, Banbury town centre will not entirely be lost.  We can just about maintain life and soul in Banbury so long as Books and Ink remains open.  The shelves here are full of good things. The prices are very good. I don't have any figures for the literacy rate of this town, and I wouldn't like to cast any aspersions, but either the owner has a preternaturally fine taste in re-stocking the shelves and works at it like a demon, or the masses aren't surging in here to take these goodies off his hands at the rate that this bookshop deserves. Again, like Attic books in Cheltenham, I do strongly recommend that you shop here. Keep this bookshop afloat, otherwise Banbury is on the list for being ploughed back to earth and the ground salted. If you could persuade the owners that a coffee machine and plate of cakes would fit into a corner, then so much the better. 

Attic Books
14 St James Street
Cheltenham, GLOS, United Kingdom GL52 2SH
Tel: 01242 255300

WEBSITE

Books and Ink Bookshop 
4 White Lion Walk, Banbury, Oxon OX16 5UD
Tel. (01295) 709769
Email: books@booksandink.co.uk

WEBSITE