Inspiring Older Readers

posted on 12 Dec 2015

18 Bookshops by Anne Scott

I suspect you may not have heard of Anne Scott, some time journalist and BBC Scotland broadcaster, but you might just possibly have heard of her son, Mike Scott, who fronts the band The Waterboys. You'll certainly know more about Anne if you read this book because she gives everyone a little glimpse into her love of book shops and the essential poetry she feels when she contemplates some of her favourites.

This book takes an interesting approach to showcasing the 18 bookshops she's chosen to include here. You wont get anything like a conventional review of the shop - indeed, you aren't even able to visit the majority of them. What Scott has produced here is a strange cross between a contemplation on the nature of the shops she has visited in her lifetime and what you might call book shop archeology - an exploration of shops reimagined as they might have been back in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These were real shops in real places but beyond knowing where they were and for how long, everything else is speculation and re-creation.

London in the 60s was clearly an important time for the author and many of her memories revolve around her life in the days of the counter-culture. But she is also deeply invested in the book shop history of Scotland and seemingly the more remote the shop is the better!

All of the vignettes are brief and deeply lyrical and the book flashes by in a single sitting. For those of you fascinated by the history of the book there is enough here to send you off to follow the leads she gives you. For readers who are more like me - hungry for a glimpse of book shops I can have a chance of visiting - there's stuff here to to pique your interest.

Terry Potter

December 2015