Slightly edited for clarity.
Alex
Welcome to Paper Defiance, a fortnightly podcast all about indie bookshops and their owners. My name is Alex, and I am recording this on Wadawaurang land, in Ballarat Australia. It’s exciting to have you join me.
For this episode, we’re leaving Australia and heading to Bath, in England. I’m joined by Nic from Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights, and yes we do get into why that particular name. We discuss the evolution of the physical space of the shop, the role of ebooks and the importance of bricks and mortar bookshops, and I even introduce Nic to what is apparently an Australian term, or at least one not usually used in England, which was honestly a very satisfying moment for me.
Before I hand you over to Nic, a request: if you’ve enjoyed Paper Defiance so far, would you consider leaving a review on iTunes, if that’s where you listen? Or maybe tell someone else who you think might enjoy it? I’d really appreciate it.
OK, here’s Nic, with tales of starting a bookshop and doing pop-ups at music festivals.
Nic
I’m Nic Bottomley, I’m the co owner of Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath. I’m also the Executive Chair of the UK’s Bookseller Association.
Alex
So it’s perhaps obvious, but I’ll ask anyway, how did the name for the bookshop come about?
Nic
Well, I guess the ‘B’ rather than any other letter is the obvious bit, but the name of the bookshop – I’ll tell you the actual story of how it came about. You know, when you start out any piece of entrepreneurial work, often you fast track to the bit where you’re doing the name, because that’s the fun bit, you know, doing the thing the draft cash flow, or the business plan is not quite so entertaining. So I specifically remember where Juliet, my wife and I, were, when we plotted the name: we were in a particular restaurant, in Prague, which is where we lived at the time. But it was a Macedonian restaurant, though – it had Greek and Turkish and Macedonian, Bulgarian type flavors. And we were drinking some really fairly potent Macedonian wine. And we said, okay, look, instead of lots of – it was very trendy at that time, still is, I guess, for shops to be called, like, Book, or like White, or whatever, it depended if it was like a clothing company, you know, like a single word – so we thought, what if we did the opposite. And we basically said, Oh, something like, Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights, almost straightaway. And then we spent basically the rest of that evening and another three weeks kind of substituting words and fiddling with it, but actually ended up back with what was one of the first iterations of that. So we were kind of trying to go modern, by sounding ridiculously over the top and old fashioned. And I guess, we absolutely didn’t want it to be a bookshop that just had our name on it, but B rather than any other letter for – because, yeah, why not? Because that was the surname. But I also think we never – you know, after we’d opened the bookshop, people would come in and say, Oh, who’s Mr. B, like, straightaway, and I guess I hadn’t really realised that would happen. So I became Mr. B, because there had to be a Mr. B. Kids wanted there to be a Mr. B, regular customers, you know, just want to call you Mr. B. But actually, the intention in our head, I think, was that Mr. B was some cane-wielding kind of philanthropist who wandered the world, you know, gathering books. So he’s fictitious, as far as we’re concerned, but not as far as anyone else is concerned.
Alex
The cane wielding and the wandering can be like a life goal for you eventually, then.
Nic
It could. Yeah. Eventually, I will age into the character that I have in my head. And I’m, you know, a lot closer to that than when we first started.
Alex
All of which then begs the kind of origin question. Even before that, how do you get to the point that you’re in a Macedonian restaurant in Prague talking about what you’re going to name your bookshop?
Nic
We lived in Prague for several years, and we got married from Prague, we kind of organised a very excellent, but slightly non-traditional chaotic wedding, and we organised it ourselves. Lots of our pals came over, and it was great. And then we went straight off on honeymoon. And it was, you know, a contrast of sort of planning your own wedding and everything that there was that blissful feeling, you got like three weeks and a little bit ahead of you. And we had thought a lot that we weren’t going to do the jobs we were doing then forever. We kind of had reached that point. But this certainly was an open canvas of time to think about it. And on the first day of our honeymoon, we were in Seattle, – we went to Seattle, and then up to Alaska – and in Seattle, on the very first sort of day, you know, jet lagged and what have you, we went to the Elliott Bay Book Company, which is one of the world’s great independent book shops. And I always cite it as being definitely the catalyst moment. We walked around this shop, and we were like, “huh. An independent bookshop, that’s kind of THE place in a city as big as Seattle to get books.” You know, nobody thinks “oh, Barnes and Noble. Oh, and then isn’t there that other one?” It’s like, they think Seattle, they think Elliott Bay Book Company first – it’s been there, at that point, it had been there 32 years. So that means they must be on or around or just passed their 50th anniversary now. And it was just so full of book opinion, everywhere, like whether it was on little shelf talkers, whether it was on the people that really proactively came up to try to recommend books to you; such a nice space to be in. And I guess we just started thinking – because we’d sort of got it in our head, we’d started thinking, look when we shift from what we’re doing now, let’s shift to something that – where the underlying thing is something we love; because we were lawyers, so we had the work ethic and everything. So we knew if look, if we’re going to spend five or six, sevenths of our life thinking about work, or working, then let’s make sure it’s something that we love. So then we were in this book shop and we were like hey, what about that? So yeah, a couple of nights later, we started thinking – what if we did that – what is the situation the UK, doesn’t feel like there are so many confident independent bookstores out there. And when we got back to Prague, we started actually researching it properly. And of course, I found there were good independent bookshops, some that had withstood the onslaught of Amazon, but a lot – it was a little beleaguered, the bookshop market, because Waterstones had expanded very rapidly at the expense of some independents. And then Amazon had arrived and really started sinking its teeth into the high street. Yeah, so that’s how it started.
Alex
That’s really fantastic. And I have to say, a couple of years ago, when I was in England, I have actually visited your shop, and it is a great, really fantastic space.
Nic
That’s very kind.
Alex
So was that your first and only location? Have you always been there?
Nic
Yeah, we’ve always been there. I don’t know when you visited, we began with two rooms on the ground floor, plus a corridor with three or four more bays in it. And then a basement room with maybe another 15, 20 bays in it, like a nice basement room. And then 18 months later, there was an office above us. They were an IT service company. And they left and we had the opportunity to expand simply by opening an interior door. So although it was early for us, we did it. And that’s when we added two more rooms upstairs. And then in late 2018, our landlord was the gallery next door to us and you know, leases were coming up for renewal, we were keen to renew, but we were keen to have more space. So actually they, our landlord, ended up relocating, and we took over their gallery. And again, that was just a question about removal of an interior door thing to expand. So now, depending when you visited it, it’s all the same space, but it’s kind of been bolted on. So we’re now up to 10 or 11 rooms.
Alex
Yeah, I was there – I actually managed to get there in January of 2020; just snuck in.
Nic
Yeah, you saw the full iteration. And there was not even any one way systems or screens that we have had there for a while.
Alex
It was amazing. And it really struck me just how – again, it felt kind of silly to say, but it’s just so full of books, it is just chockers, floor to ceiling, all those good things. When you are thinking about the space – and I guess when you were thinking about expanding as well – what was some of your ideas or parameters? What did you want the space to feel like? And do you think you’ve managed it?
Nic
So the first thing I’d say is that we, compared to a lot of bookstores all around the world that I visited, we are very, very focused on books. We do sell board games, we do sell greeting cards, we do sell a small range of stationery, but we really do nail our flag to the mast of books primarily. And we don’t max – we use a lot of face outs. So we could squeeze plenty more books in there if we tried but yeah, it’s very booky. You know, that is the sort of – it sounds stupid thing to say about a bookshop but we do, it’s primarily there to showcase books in all their glory. And as I said, as we took from, you know, some of the great bookstores we looked at in the beginning, to showcase the opinion of booksellers, about books, you know, and that’s the main thing we want the space to do functionally – to operate as a place where people can explore and discover and talk about books. So it is a place where people can linger. There are comfortable chairs, there are little nooks and corners everywhere where people can spend time. There’s also comfortable chairs where we can talk to customers through things like our reading spas, and just generally – chances where we can engage with our readers. And then in terms of the sort of aesthetic, all credit goes to Juliet who kind from the start designed that and then it’s kind of tweaked. We always liked the idea that the space would be – the bookshelves are light coloured, it’s a very light place hopefully; it’s in a quite a narrow street but it’s still very, it feels like, on a Saturday morning feels like the light pours in and it just kind of open I think. But it was supposed to be a space where you don’t really know what you might come across. It’s not completely bonkers, but there is some random stuff. I mean, the obvious thing is a claw-foot bath, which we’ve always had there, which is converted into a book display. We’ve got a full sized carved wooden man who is currently located on top of one of the bookshelves – you might see, you might not even notice. We’ve got a whole ceiling now covered with pens. So every time an author comes to sign, we steal their pen, and then they sign like a luggage tag. So we’ve got a pen ceiling, a wall wallpapered in Tintin books. And things change, we used to have a thing called a reading booth where people could actually like lock themselves away in the booth with a slice of bacon for like an hour at a time – it had a little sliding door. It was like you would find an old telephone booth in a Victorian railway station or something. That went for various reasons in the end. And then we also used to have a table that was completely – the legs were constructed out of Penguin Books, which my colleague Ed’s brilliant artist mother made, and we sold that as part of the community funding element of our expansion actually.
Alex
That’s fantastic. Do you therefore have a favourite physical part of the bookshop? Or is that like choosing a favourite might be.
Nic
I don’t think it’s choosing a favourite child. What is my favourite bit? I guess right now, the children’s section is my favourite bit of the shop. Because when we expanded, we really expanded the children’s section – we already had this huge carved wooden tree that doubled up as a display section for board books for younger kids in our original children’s section. We relocated that into the new children’s section, when we expanded, and then added more carved trees, and they’re painted in very bright colours as you will have seen. There’s a huge mural of a bear who’s kind of reading, and there’s lots of random animals dangling around the place, again, all brightly painted on wood. And it was all put together by Alex Lucas, who is a street artist and large scale artist who works in Bristol. And she worked with us on the expansion and did all that. And I think she’s just – it’s just amazing space, to watch young kids go into that space and the kind of – all throughout our shop it’s either, the bookshelves are either cream, or they’re pale green, but you go in there and they’re like a deep navy with like gold lettering, and it just kind of zings really well. I will just say one other thing, though, on a Saturday morning I absolutely love walking up into our first room upstairs, which is just – it’s like the art room. It’s where all those sort of visual books are, and nature is up there as well. There’s something on a sunny day about opening that door before anyone’s in. I don’t know what it is. It almost like – that room smells like, the carpet smells new, even though it’s been, well, it’s probably the second carpet in 16 years, it’s probably not the first carpet, I can’t remember in that room, but you know, it just somehow – yeah, there’s something lovely about that space in a morning.
Alex
So you’ve been doing this for quite a long time, then now: I guess ignoring the last two years, because that’s just a whole other thing, do you feel like the experience of being an indie bookshop has changed over that time?
Nic
Yeah, I do. We have such an incredibly collegiate industry. And obviously, as I mentioned at the beginning, I’m kind of involved with the Trade Association as well. And I have the opportunity to connect with people in the trade associations in the US, Australia and New Zealand, in Europe, so I’m always thinking of how you know, that question, I kind of feel like, I need to answer not just as Mr. B’s but you know, as how the bookshop experience generally because I speak to my peers so much. And I just think there’s a lot more confidence and swagger in independent booksselling in 2022, or, you know, there may be there’s a little, as you said, a little degree of nervousness about – well there’s always an edge. But there’s a bit of confidence, swagger, about what an independent bookshop stands for and why it’s important to have in the high street. High streets are reconfigured. But I think increasingly, people think of an independent bookshop as something that is a keystone to whatever the high street looks like. Like maybe they’re thinking, do we need as many fashion shops or gift shops as we once had? And, you know, I hope that those retail sectors do manage to work out how to kind of, you know, stay alongside us on the high street, but maybe there’s something about a bookshop, where the customer seems to regard it in a different way. It feels like it has a value and a community value and just a kind of place that people want to be. So as our high streets become more cafe dominated, or more, you know, work-hub dominated, or what have you, all forms of retail don’t necessarily feel so guaranteed a place, but I feel that a good bookshop does. And I feel that book shops, you know, we’ve spent now 26 years or something competing with Amazon, and I figure that, therefore, a lot of the hard lessons have been learned. They know how not to do that, if they want to stay. And therefore they’ve just got quite a lot of experience and track record. And when we started in 2006, Amazon really had caused a lot of closures. There were, you know, other factors, then we went into a recession that caused some more closures. It was a time when people weren’t opening bookstores. So it was a little bit of a lonelier space. But now, there’s so many people giving it a go. Our conference in the UK in 2019 was so full of new booksellers really, and most of them are still there, despite the fact they’ve had the worst possible time to begin that journey. So I think that’s the main difference, there’s just a sort of – the bookshops have become more confident in the fact that you can do it in many different ways. And you don’t have to just do it, oh, we’re just here to sell books. And we’re doing it in worse conditions than our big online competitors, so it’s a diminishing return. They’ve realised, no, we can do anything, whatever we want to be. We either want to be a bookstore, you know, which is all about service, which is all about experience, which is all about the space, or we want to be a community led bookstore, that is all about giving back, or we want – all the different ways they can – or we want to sell books, we want to sell, you know, there’s one not so far from here that also sells hats. Books and hats, why not. So whatever the niche might be, or we’re going to have a, you know, a fantastic cafe or a deli or whatever, there’s so many different ways to cut it. So I think that’s the big difference.
Alex
I think that idea of the bookshop being an integral part of a community is a really interesting idea. And I think for all that I love book shops, and always have, I hadn’t really ever thought about that, until really, quite recently, probably actually, because of, you know, the lock downs – about book shops as a place to connect with people and to just, even if you’re not buying something to wander in and to almost feel surrounded by your friends, because that’s what books can kind of feel like.
Nic
Yeah, I think people missed it, right, when it wasn’t there, people missed it.
Alex
Obviously, there will have been many ups and downs for you over the last 16 years. Are there things that particularly stand out as being surprises, as things that have pleasantly surprised you over that time?
Nic
I mean, from day one, what surprised me was how loyal customers can be and how fierce advocates they can be for you. You know, we began – we did not begin this business, we began it on pretty much a shoestring. We didn’t have marketing money or anything. So all we just did was try to deliver really great stuff, service and experience and then your customers just become these super fans who provide you with marketing and word of mouth recommendation that is better than any marketing you can buy. And you know, people would go around the corner to the big chain bookstores – who by the way, we have a magnificent relationship with and are just as is important to the high street as independents, especially now, you know; I think before I joined the industry, there may have been a chain versus independent battle line, but that got redrawn many years ago, we’re both on the same side. But nevertheless, some customers would go around to some of those chain bookstores, see a book on the shelf that they could buy right then and then walk around to us and order it. Because we – and it made me change the way that I operate as a consumer, I suppose. You know, I’ve always been a big fan of any family owned, independent, business, seek them out wherever I’m traveling and what have you. But I guess it made me realise just how much you can do that if you choose to make that decision to support those businesses that are integral to your community. So yeah, I think that was a huge surprise. What else was a big surprise? It’s a really good question was a surprise. I mean, obviously there have been – oh, okay. Here’s another one that’s a bit of a surprise. Although I think it was a surprise to others more than me. Ebooks. In 2011 I remember going to our industry conference and there was – a method had been created for independent book shops to sell ebook, ereaders, and ebooks on it. And the guys who were behind that were really trying to get bookstores on board with it. And we had just been named Independent Bookshop of the Year for the second time. So we were very much kind of high up their hit list of people they wanted to say, Yeah, we’re going to do this, we’re going to put in a big display of ereaders, we’re going to do that, and then you’d get some tiny commission on the ebooks. And at that conference, I kind of made the decision, I’m definitely not going to do this, because we’re about physical books. And it doesn’t mean, there’s anything wrong with ebooks. And it doesn’t mean that they’re not going to play an important path for consumers. It’s just, I kind of bet that physical books would be around and be a big enough market slice to sustain a growing independent bookshop. And so far, that’s proven to be the case. Ebooks, of course, have cut into physical book sales in certain sectors. But physical books have remained important for adults and children alike. And everybody had this massive existential crisis that it was going to be the death of the physical book – the physical book have been around for like four or 500 years, whatever it is, somebody will tell me that it was much longer than that, but give or take. And it’s really interesting how those two things now coexist. And we didn’t actually need to worry that it was going to be the death of one or the other. Of course, you know, publishers had a lot of work to do.
Alex
No, it’s as you say, bookshops keep springing up. So clearly, people still want the physical, tangible experience. One of the reasons we’re recording when we are is that when I initially got in touch with you, you were about to set up a bookshop, I think it was at WOMAD.
Nic
Oh, yeah.
Alex
Doesn’t seem to be necessarily the sort of place where you would be selling books. So how did that come about for you,
Nic
You know, music festivals are quite a good place to, or a fun place to sell books, and they work quite well. In fact we sold more books this year at WOMAD than any of the other – we’ve done four music festivals in total. We’ve done three WOMADs, but it all began with doing Glastonbury, which is a different kettle of fish. So we just decided, because we liked doing things differently, we decided to be the first bookshop to put a bookstore into Glastonbury, if we could. And it was utterly exhausting. And an experience that I don’t think any of the five of us who did will actually kind of ever forget. The thing with Glastonbury though is you really need to be on site for eight days. You’re sleeping in a tent behind your books – right behind your books – in the middle of – the music never really stops. And you’re … it’s not so easy to get to showers, there’s very limited opportunity for getting any of the grime off, and we were selling books from 9am to 3am every day. So it was fun, it was like, what is it that David Foster Wallace calls it, a supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again. We might do it again. But if I do it again, I’m not not doing all eight days. Anyway. It was amazing. It was a great experience. And you know, we curated a selection of books, we took bookshelves, we built a bookshop in ridiculous heat for UK standards, you know, 33 Celsius or something, 34 Celsius with no shade whatsoever. And we built that thing over two days we were out – it was brutal. Then WOMAD is a world music festival that is also very close to us just like Glastonbury is. And the good thing about WOMAD is it actually has as well, a little bit more than Glastonbury has, it has a literature program as well. So it has this World of Words section, where authors often from around the world or who’ve written books set around the world, and often with or touching on social issues that are kind of – that a lot of the attendees at WOMAD, which is a very kind of liberal, kind of artsy kind of music festival, that they’ll have an affinity with. There’s a whole program of literary talks if you like. And so you’ve got those books. Plus, you know, an audience that yeah, often people who come to the music festival, they haven’t seen us there before, they don’t really realise that a bookstore makes sense. But then, our tent is full of people from the minute we open the door – on that one, we open at noon on a Thursday, and we close at midnight on Sunday. And it’s full, it’s full, all the way through till midnight each night, 1am each night. It’s full of people and you know, there’s a lot of dead time at festivals where you’re sitting for 40 minutes waiting for an act to come on. So it’s good to to have a book in your pocket. And we’re kind of located between the stages and tents so you know people can squirrel away their books in the tent and … it’s great fun. And it does sell books. And in the case of WOMAD, it’s, I think, I don’t remember what it is with Glastonbury. They have maybe 300,000 people on site. WOMAD is something like – I think they had biggest numbers ever, so I’m probably underselling it. But maybe it’s more like 40,000. And the difference with that is, we can get people on and off. So they’re not necessarily there for the setup, and the build and the sting and the deconstruction. So it works really well.
Alex
I’ve been mocked for taking books places, just in case I needed something to do. So I think the idea of books at a music festival makes perfect sense.
Nic
Honestly, I got most of the way through a book at one concert I was at once, because you know, I wanted to get a half decent spot in the standing area and it was a beautiful sunny day. So I just sat there, happened to be at that gig on my own, and sat there and read my book for like, three hours and you know, stole a bit of the neighbour’s picnic and stuff. Yeah, it was great. You need a book.
Alex
Always, always. And this is one way that ebooks can actually be very useful because an iPad or a Kindle is a lot lighter.
Nic
No, that is true. But I still, I completely agree with that. But I still love, you know, like a thin paperback that you can, you know, one that you’re not precious about. You can slide it even into your back pocket of your, you know – I’m showing you a thin paperback now. It’s not any good for anyone who’s listening, but I’ve just got one on my desk. That kind of thing where you can just, it can be there battered. And when the gig starts or when whoever you’re meeting arrives, you shove it in your pocket. Come back to it later.
Alex
Nic, I have two final questions for you. The first is what are you currently reading?
Nic
Okay, so I am reading a book called Handmade by Siri Helle. Which is – now it has a great subtitle. And it’s called something like, maybe I’m gonna get it right instead of saying, I have it right here. It is called “Learning the art of chainsaw mindfulness in a Norwegian wood.” I love the idea of chainsaw mindfulness. This is a book by a Norwegian woman who inherits a, what they call like, I think she’d call it like a proper cabin, which the Norwegians mean is one where you’ve got to like hike a mile to get to it. Not one you can drive your four by four up to. And then she inherits it and it’s been built by her family. And then she decides to take it back from – there’s a little bit too many trees around it. And it needs all thinning down. So she kind of reconnects – she is very, it’s not like one of these things where she’s never used a chainsaw before. And she’s incredible. So it’s really about, it’s kind of a bit of a memoir. And it’s quite elemental. It’s about forests and water. And the reason I’m reading that is because I’m going to be chairing a panel with her, and Lars Mytting, who wrote Norwegian Wood and various novels as well, Norwegian novelist, and the great Karlov Ave Norsgaard. I’m going to be chairing an event with all three of them at the Norwegian Embassy in a couple of weeks, on behalf of the Norwegian Literary Association, they asked me to chair it. So I’m diving into that. And often that is the way that I often read for events and then dip around. I’ll also be reading Kamila Shamsie’s latest novel soon, because that’s coming up with an event at the end of this month.
Alex
And finally, are there things that you think listeners should know about, about your bookshop? Or about things that are coming up – things you’d like to spruik?
Nic
What was that word you just said? Things I’d like to what?
Alex
Spruik?
Nic
What is that?
Alex
Is that an Australianism?
Nic
Yeah I don’t know it.
Alex
To promote – a spruiker is someone who stands outside a restaurant and says, Would you like to come inside? We’ll give you a free garlic bread or something.
Nic
Right. And they’ve got the photo of the food and then you think no, I’ll go –
Alex
Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
Nic
Spruik is the Word of the Week here at Mr. B’s. I’m glad we’re recording this on a Monday because this is going to be – I’m going to spruik constantly from now on.
Alex
That’s pretty much what handselling is.
Nic
We’re spruiking all the time. Yeah. Brilliant. No, not a word I’ve ever come across before or if I have I forgotten and it also sounds like one of these words where it’s mashed up
Alex
Yeah, I’ve I actually have no idea of the etymology. So I’m gonna have to look that up now.
Nic
Okay. Listen, what do I want to spruik? I want to – there’s two things I want to spruik. I want to spruik independent bookshops generally, wherever people listening to this are located. I want to do the thing of just reminding people what amazing, serendipitous encounters you can have with books when you walk into any independent bookshop and actually just pick the brains of whoever’s there, whatever book nerd might serve you is going to have some book to recommend that you don’t know about. And with the Mr. B’s hat on, I guess the thing that I would always spruik is the way we do that. And there’s a couple of ways. One is we have a thing on our website, which is a great fun thing called a recommendation station where you put in the last three books you loved, and you answer like one other question. And then you don’t get an instant answer back because this is not an algorithm, you have to wait. And then in a day or two, one of our booksellers is going to send you a page on our website, you know, with the buy buttons there, if you choose to buy from us, which we obviously hope you would do sometimes. But if geography or shipping costs don’t permit that, you know, it’s just good for getting a recommendation – we recommend like four books that we think you’d love based on. And then the other thing we do is our reading subscriptions. And we definitely do have some Australian customers for that, and dotted all around the world, which is just our reading subscriptions where – I guess we started them pretty early, we’ve been doing them for a dozen years now. It’s all again about tailored recommendations. So if you fill in a questionnaire, and tell us all about your reading tastes, there’s some sort of irreverent questions and some serious questions. And then one of us is appointed as your bibliotherapist for the length of your subscription, and each month, we choose you a book. We double check with you in a slightly oblique way, if you want to keep it a surprise, to make sure we’re not sending something you already know about. And then you get a book through your letterbox and it’s very beautifully wrapped, and comes with a beautiful letterpress bookmark made by another great Bath independent business that we work with. And then yeah, we kind of curate your reading. So yeah, the reading subscription is a great gift for anyone. We send them all around. We have a lot of fun with it. It’s just an extension of that recommending thing that I think all bookshops do.
Alex
I love that as an idea. So thank you very much, Nic. This has been a really fantastic conversation.
Nic
I’ve enjoyed a lot – a great way to start the week for me.
Alex
Staying in England, here’s a new vignette from Amy, who’s visiting the Lakes District.
Amy
Hello, my name is Amy and one of my favorite book shops is called Sam Read [reed], or possibly Sam Read [red]. Actually, it’s quite hard to know what exactly Sam is doing other than being a lovely bookshop, nestled between the stunning green and craggy hills of Grasmere, England. The book selection while on the smaller side is delightful, featuring fantastic narratives on running and tracking, as well as a children’s book collection to make the young reader swoon if he’s into that sort of thing. Browsing between covers, I once stumbled onto a book called Margaret’s Unicorn, a perfect Scottish tale about belonging and magic in new spaces, for which I will be forever grateful to have read. The kicker on a recent visit, however, stole the delight cake for there was sitting, against the wall as nonchalantly as the language, a lovely if confusing message in reference to the pandemic. It read: Please wear your mask if interested. Thanks.
Alex
Thanks for listening to this fifth episode. You can find paper defiance on Twitter as paperdefiancepod. On Instagram, as paperdefiance. And on Facebook, it is Paper Defiance Podcast.
This podcast is created and produced by me, Alexandra Pierce. The music is called Loopster, by Kevin MacLeod; you can find the attribution at paperdefiance.com.
Music: “Loopster” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Paper Defiance 