Book birds! All over the window and the ceiling. That was my first impression of this great store, and what a first impression to get. Another interesting feature: no categories, strict alphabetical order; mixing fiction and non-fiction, crime and love stories. Sort of the opposite to the bookshop in The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend. It must be a great way to get people to try books they might not otherwise have come across, and there’s a certain appealing simplicity in having just great books and great authors, with no categories superimposed by us.

Most interesting feature: sliding bookshelf-doors! Louise and I stood there for quite some time, trying to decide if they were doors. We knew that there was a literary agency somewhere downstairs, since we had been warned not to worry if we started hearing voices. Did the literary agency have an office with bookshelves-doors?

@katarinabivald yes they are, we like to keep the agents hidden away!

— Lutyens & Rubinstein (@LandRBookshop) February 18, 2015

They did indeed. Unfortunately, the space and oxygen was not big enough to also take in a Swedish author, otherwise it would have been the perfect office. Even if I would have played with the doors a little bit too much (not to mention suddenly sticking out my head everytime I heard customers. Perhaps just as well they didn’t have room for me. How do the agents resist the temptation?)

Their recommendation: Ferrante, one of Louise’s personal favourite that she would have urged me to buy a long time ago if it were not for her respect of the one-book-rule.