This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is about bookish places I’ve visited! I think the emphasis is more generally on cool places from books, author residences, etc, but somehow that’s not a thing that really excites me and I can’t think of much right now!
So… time to talk about my favourite bookshops! After each I’m listing their locations that I’ve visited and can personally recommend, not their full list of shops.
- Portal Bookshop (York).
From when Lali saved my bacon with a copy of one of Martha Wells’ books at a signing at Worldcon, I’ve been a big supporter of Portal Bookshop, and was so happy when they managed to set up premises in York — which is close enough to be a good day trip. They stock a range of queer books and diverse SF/F works, and I have them to thank for my love of authors like Jordan L. Hawk and much of my collection of KJ Charles’ books in print. - Topping & Company (Bath, Edinburgh, Ely).
This is a growing chain of indie bookshops, but I first met them in Edinburgh, where the shop is downright magical. I swear there are more rooms than physically make sense with the footprint of the shop, and every time I turned around there was somehow another one. The ladders on wheels and wooden shelving add to that experience a lot. They’ve recently opened a shop in York too, though I just visited their shop in Bath yesterday as part of my birthday trip! - Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights (Bath).
I love the name of this bookshop; the whimsy is definitely part of why I went there. I did find the organisation of the shop a bit bewildering, since all fiction is shelved together without distinction by genre: maybe it sounds weird, given the range of genres I read, but I don’t really like that. It makes my job browsing the shelves harder, when I don’t know if a dragon on the spine means a dragon or just a literary thing. If you’re looking for a bookish conversation or some bookseller recommendations, though, it’s a good one. - Gay’s the Word (London).
Gay’s the Word is the oldest queer bookshop in the UK, and I visited it recently on my graduation trip to London. The shop feels pretty small, but I carried away a sizeable pile of books anyway. I recently read and cried a little over the history of the shop and persecution against its owners and workers in A.J. West’s How Queer Bookshops Changed the World, which is a book I definitely recommend. - Forbidden Planet (London, Bristol).
I know, this is somewhat less potentially niche, but the London store is amazing, with a selection of comics, manga, danmei, and SF/F books that really have to be seen to be believed. I can never leave without new books, and the sheer number of books they showcase means I often find temptations that Waterstones don’t seem to stock. I found a few treasures in the Bristol shop, too, though it’s considerably smaller. - Troutmark Books (Cardiff).
This secondhand bookshop was vital to me in my teens and twenties. Whenever I went home to Wales in my teens, and when I lived there as a student, I loved turning up to look at the SF/F section, poke my nose into the comics, etc. It’s been a long time since I visited, but I imagine it pretty much unchanged, with the high shelves still packed to the ceiling. Maybe I’ll pop my head in today, since I might be in the area… - Paramount Books (Manchester).
In the same vein, this secondhand bookshop in Manchester impressed me so much that at one point I actually wrote a review of it on this blog. I don’t buy secondhand books much at the moment, but if that changes I’ll definitely make return visits — perhaps not too regularly, as Manchester isn’t super convenient… but when I can! - Criminally Good Books (York).
On my last trip to Portal Bookshop, I also heard about this shop and had to take a look. I was admittedly more impressed by their non-fiction selection, since I’m a fan of classic crime and there wasn’t a lot of that to be seen (and what they had, I’d read), but I did enjoy the selections of non-fiction and inevitably left with a few books. - The American Book Center (Amsterdam, The Hague).
When I lived in Belgium, we made semi-regular trips to get me English-language books to keep my engines running. The selection (particularly at the Amsterdam location) was unbelievable, though it was mostly the SF/F that drew me. I haven’t visited since we moved to the UK in 2018, but I’m sure it’s still amazing. - Bookshop.org (online).
If you want to support indie bookshops, then this is an indispensable resource in the UK, and almost as quick as getting your books off Amazon — just as quick, if you pay a little extra for first class delivery, at least in the UK! You can choose a specific bookshop to support with your purchases, or it’ll be divided up between signed-up bookshops.
There are a few others I would’ve mentioned but found out they’ve closed since — don’t forget that an independent bookshop can be a fragile thing and needs the support of its enthusiastic community!
