Doing it by the book

Our desire to buy online may have blighted many high streets, but, happily, plenty of independent bookshops are still thriving against the odds. Catriona Gray picks seven of her favourite stores off the shelf

- Catriona Gray

ONE summer, when I was a student at Trinity College in Dublin, I got a job helping to clear out a very old bookshop on the banks of the River Liffey. Years before, the proprietor— for reasons unknown—had simply locked it up one day and left, never to return. Over time, the shop fossilised into a literary time capsule. The bell on the door remained silent, the books gathered dust and the shelves mouldered as the damp seeped in, until the shop was finally sold and the decision was taken to reopen it. For several months, I was immersed in the business of taking apart a bookshop and putting it back together again. The abandoned volumes were sorted, boxed up and sold, and an array of shiny new titles were shipped in, to be catalogued and arranged upon the shelves. There was fresh paint, bleached wood, a credit card machine and a restaurant upstairs. It was quite clearly the end of one chapter and the beginning of another, a glimpse into the heart and soul of the place.

What gives a bookshop such a special atmosphere? Perhaps it is the peculiar nature of the goods it sells. Unlike a chair, or a picture, or an item of clothing, you can’t immediately tell whether you are going to like what you are buying—a book requires you to read it first. To step inside a bookshop is to be met with a realm filled with possibilities, where every shelf contains dozens of worlds waiting to be discovered. This feeling intensifies when you discover one that’s run by a passionate reader, someone who’s willing to give space to forgotten gems and lesser-known authors, because they know that other people will enjoy them, too.