Finding: All the Lovely Bookshops in London

At the beginning of this month, I spent a week in London. I’d been planning the trip since the fall, and in the midst of sketching out my itinerary, I made sure to pick out several bookshops to browse over the course of my stay. I rented a flat around the corner from the British Museum in the neighborhood of Holborn, in the borough of Camden, which put me within a four-block walking radius of several booksellers.

First was The London Review of Books shop, right on my corner, complete with its own tea shop and outdoor seating area, and home to a vast range of genres and book review quarterlies. (The London Review of Books is published fortnightly). I popped in three times over the course of the week.

In the opposite direction was the Atlantis Bookshop, an independent shop specializing in magic and the occult, tarot cards, incense, and various other related accoutrements. The shopkeeper, dressed in silky garb, with purple hair and a row of stars tattooed over her left eye, was having a conversation on the phone, and I happened to over hear a snippet: “If they had any sense at all they’d bask in your reflected glory and get on with it!”

Bookmarks, another shop in the immediate vicinity, specializes in left-leaning, social issue-focused, and occasionally radical texts. I noticed there were flyers posted in the windows for various social causes, and books by and for every racial minority, women’s issues, and so much more.

Venturing further out into London, I made a special trip west to Marylebone to find Daunt Books, perfectly catered to my taste for travel writing. If the collection alone wasn’t enough, the space itself boasts gorgeous oak architecture and an enormous vaulted skylight, making browsing their extensive selection of writing from and for every place imaginable even more cathartic with the sunlight streaming through. [Note: I experienced surprisingly good weather in London.]

On Sunday, in the midst of a trek around the East London neighborhoods of Bethnal Green, Shoreditch, Whitechapel, and Spitalfields, in the boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets, I sought out and stumbled upon a few more shops. Making my way southwest from the Columbia Road Flower Market, I wandered down a neat little side street covered in murals and found Artwords Bookshop. With books and magazines on contemporary visual culture, fine art, graphic design, and fashion, I felt as though I discovered a treasure trove. I slowly perused their selection, pouring over books about keeping things fresh as a graphic designer and how “selfie culture” and the infiltration of photography into our everyday lives has reshaped our perception of the world around us.

Later, I found Brick Lane Bookshop, which was unfortunately much less interesting than I’d expected, amplified thanks to the crush of crowds swirling around the market tents up and down the street outside. Down the block, I checked out Rough Trade East’s selection of pop culture related titles, and a table of casual reader’s staples inside Old Spitalfields Market.

One of my last stops was the famous Notting Hill Book Shop. Never having seen the namesake movie myself (I know, I know), I at first found it odd that a small group of tourists were taking turns snapping selfies in front of the shop, but soon realized what I was I missing when I spied a wall of film paraphernalia inside. The selection was fairly ordinary, and I was soon pushed out of the way by a delivery service dropping off a dozen boxes of books.

Honorable Mentions:

The massive Forbidden Planet London Megastore had the most extensive sci-fi section I have ever witnessed. I even made a video of it for Frank so he could witness the magnitude.

The last stop on my Muggle’s Tour of London (of course I booked that!) was in the middle of Cecil Court, the inspiration for Diagon Alley. Famous on its own for book shops, I counted seven: a few antique and rare book sellers, a children’s shop with a poster of the illustrated version of Harry Potter right in the window, and Watkin’s Books, longtime seller of spell books, among other things.

So, dear readers, the moral of this travel story is this: you needn’t go far in London to find a bookshop that will cater to your tastes and fill you with whimsy.

- Chelsea

More But I’d Rather Be Reading! here.

Review: The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson

If I’m honest, the whole notion of a “children’s book” confuses me. The brevity of language employed should not decide what is age appropriate, and content should never be vetted for what is worthy for an adult as something a child doesn’t deserve. I understand that thematically and narratively there are stories that work well for, or are otherwise intended for, a specific audience, but to a declare novel “for children” rather than trusting the readers to engage with a narrative told from the perspective of a child or else for that of a child seems to me a very cynical way to approach reading and a less than respectful way to treat children and the literary development of a child.

The Rithmatist is about a teenage boy named Joel, impoverished and largely unexceptional (as many teenage boys frequently must confront as they come of age), more interested in becoming a rithmatist and their ways than pursuing academic excellence. Suddenly, children have started disappearing, leaving only blood and lines of chalk behind. The missing children are rithmatists: humans with the ability to bring chalk drawings to life and do combat with these with only the aid of schooling and a piece of chalk, tasked with growing up to hold the line against wild “chalklings” (errant chalk drawings hell-bent on attacking everyone in the United Isles of America and overrunning these island nations that make up our heroes’ country). Joel manages to get involved in the investigation, but he may have bitten off more than he can chew when he comes up against evil forces he can himself do nothing to stop, without the help of a delinquent and reluctant girl named Melody and that of a disgraced professor as timid as he is brilliant. Can he solve these murders before more children are attacked? And, really, what is a rithmatist? And will Joel be able to join their ranks?

I had a lot of fun with this “children’s book.” Sanderson sets up a wonderful story that is both brisk in pace and tonally appropriate. The Rithmatist is chalk full (forgive the pun, if you will, readers) of drama and action. The main characters can be forgiven for being mostly unexceptional and mainly fodder for exposition because Sanderson’s world-building and character development skills dance for us beautifully before all is said and done. Joel and Melody play with our antagonists with precision and tenacity, really allowing us, the reader, to believe in the urgency of this story and what’s at stake. As for the antagonists, these mysterious characters hold far more promise than the protagonists insomuch as intrigue is concerned, and that’s par for the course where most of Sanderson’s works are concerned. Overall, this is a good read that does not disappoint!

- Frank

More But I'd Rather Be Reading! here.