No such thing as a bad bookshop, by Catriona

 Describe your ideal bookshop.

I'm not a discerning customer when it comes to bookshops. Look at my laptop. I've never been in a bookhop that I didn't li- 

Actually, I've just remembered a crime-fiction bookshop, in Wigtown (Scotland's book town) that a. stank of cat pee and b. was owned by an insufferable couple who had show-offy conversations with each other designed to be overheard and admired. It closed.

Which is not to say that I'm disagreeing with Eric, from yesterday, on the general topic of the bookshop cat. The bookshop *dog* on the other hand . . . Well one bookshop dog, anyway. Last week, Neil almost stepped on a wee terrier in a secondhand bookshop. It got a huge fright and skittered off after a high-pitched yelp. The owner looked up and said, quite mildly, "Oh, did he bite you?" Um, no. But if that's the level of surprise you'd feel, I think we'll both stay out of his way. Right?

And I also want to say that every other bookshop in Wigtown is lovely. Fewer than a thousand people live there but there are more than a dozen secondhand bookshops, inlcuding Scotland's largest, called The Bookshop and owned by Shaun Bythell who has written four diary-style memoirs about running it.

The words behind the lamp are "set fire to"

I love new-book bookshops too. The Avid Reader is my home bookshop. I have my launches there and order all US books from there. Old Haunts, though, up in Granite Bay is a new bookshop that's been an instant friend to our Sisters in Crime chapter. Kramers at Dupont Circle in DC was a stroll away from my flat there and served dinner. Bloomsbury in Ashland has a great coffeeshop with a charming garden. Underground Books in Oak Park is one third of a perfect evening out in Sacrmento: dinner at Fixin's, new book, old film at the Tower Theater. (Next month is Hitchcocktober.)

They're all absolutely ideal. 

But to try to answer the question . . .

My dream bookshop has comfy seats to sit and read in. It's got a banned books display that doesn't tell you why, when and where the books were banned, so you have to think. (I mean, The Wind in the Willows?) It's got non-snooty categorisation. (Because sometimes the division between "literature" and "fiction", or between "general fiction" and "mystery" comes down to nothing more than snobbery. And, often, sexism.)

I'm easy about music or no music. Even about what music. If a bookshop played Slipknot I'd be intrigued enough to linger and try to work out why. Oh. I've just remembered a happy memory from my first trip to the US in 2004. Neil and I were in Wooster (sic) OH, browsing in different bits of a big bookshop, when both of us started to actually listen to the NPR programme that was playing. Then we searched for and found each other other and both said, "Are you hearing this? What is this?" It was CarTalk. Happy days.

You know what other kind of bookshop I love? Fictional ones. Only a protagonist who's been having a rough time and suddenly inherits a creepy old house in the countryside is better Catriona-bait than a book set in a bookshop. Whether it's the total seasonal escapism of Jenny Colgan's Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop, the interrogation of toxicity in Alice Slater's Death of a Bookseller, the dramatic wallop of Amy Meyerson's The Bookshop of Yesterdays, or Laura Jensen Walker's bittersweet but redemptive The Pilgrimmage of Primrose Honeychurch (coming 20 Oct 2026), partially set in Hay-on-Wye, which is England's book town.  

And that's pretty much where we came in.

Cx