I read the glad news yesterday that the UK’s largest independent bookshop is about to be created in the city of York.
I was even gladder when I learnt that it was a branch of Toppings, which I know from the city of Ely, near my home, and I think is the greatest bookshop in the East. It has winding stairs, knowledgeable staff, a warm welcome, and books everywhere. Sometimes it overflows into the nearby Ely Cathedral to hold author events, and when authors do tours, Toppings in Ely is often on the circuit.
It accepted an early copy of one of my novels with the promise that if they sold it, I would supply more. Alas…
I could mark my travels over the years with bookshops enjoyed:
- In New York we all visited the Strand bookstore with its 18 miles of shelves, though perhaps like New York itself, a little too cramped to be entirely comfortable.
- Best for me was the Massachusetts Institute of Techology bookshop in Boston in the US, a general bookstore but with a slant towards science and SF. The MIT bookstore would be my luxury if I had a choice to take one thing to a desert island.
- In Romania I found a bookshop in a mall with a delicious selection of English works –just the curated best– along with a cafe, the fug of smoke, and, hopefully, the whispered sounds of people plotting a revolution.
- Singapore, our home for two years and fantastic in many ways, did sadly disappoint a little in the bookshop department. The shelves there were heavy with rubbishy management and self-help books. But it is a young country and perhaps its time will come.
Bookshops are cathedrals of curiosity. They are built so that we think, unthink, rethink, learn, cross out, and learn again. They are not just to provide tools for a job we have already decided to do. They are at their best when they slow us down, hold us up, serve up an alternative, give us pause. They may, please God, be nothing to do with the task at hand. They are infrastructure devoted to this truth: we may pick up the odd pebble here or there but the great ocean of truth lies all undiscovered around us.
In a world of brute, uncurious autocrats, who do not read, who say things are ‘quite simple’, they offer hope for the human species.