The Bookseller’s Tale

£9.99

This is the curious story of our long love affair with books. Whether comfort reads or cult novels, we carry them with us, inhale the smell of their pages, scrawl in their margins, and protect them from book thieves and bathwater. Despite the many enemies of reading – from poverty to prejudice, from the Spanish Inquisition to Orwellian regimes – its power has endured across centuries. This is partly thanks to people like Martin Latham, the longest-serving Waterstones manager (‘It’s not a career, it’s a philosophic path’). In ‘The Bookseller’s Tale’, Martin uncovers the history of our collective book-obsession, and introduces us to the Canterbury bookshop that has been his working home for three decades, complete at various points with two rocking horses, a hammock for staff naps, and an excavated Roman bath-house floor.

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SKU: 9780141991238 Category:

Description

A SPECTATOR AND EVENING STANDARD BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020

‘A joy. Each chapter instantly became my favourite’ David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas

‘Wonderful’ Lucy Mangan

‘The right book has a neverendingness, and so does the right bookshop.’

This is the story of our love affair with books, whether we arrange them on our shelves, inhale their smell, scrawl in their margins or just curl up with them in bed. Taking us on a journey through comfort reads, street book stalls, mythical libraries, itinerant pedlars, radical pamphleteers, extraordinary bookshop customers and fanatical collectors, Canterbury bookseller Martin Latham uncovers the curious history of our book obsession – and his own.

Part cultural history, part literary love letter and part reluctant memoir, this is the tale of one bookseller and many, many books.

‘If ferreting through bookshops is your idea of heaven, you’ll get the same pleasure from this treasure trove of a book’ Jake Kerridge, Sunday Express

Read a sample here

Additional information

Weight 0.269 kg
Dimensions 19.8 × 12.9 × 2.1 cm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback
Pages

320
Language

English
Edition
Dewey

381.4500209 (edition:23)
Readership

General – Trade / Code: K

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