While I should be writing

I spent two nights in Hay-on-Wye, and then it was back to my more whistle stop-approach to visiting bookshops: I would spend the day going from Hay-on-Wye to Oxford, by way of three different bookshops and three small towns.

So I got on the bus towards Hereford, leaving right beside the old Hay Castle, and sat there looking at sunfilled lanes and fields and sheep and lamb. From Hereford I took the train to Ledbury, a beautiful town of which I saw the High street and the bookshop.

But really, what more do you need?

It was one of those sunny Saturdays that brings out the best in small town’s High streets – people walking about, stoping for a coffee, some street vendors selling stuff and a farmer selling homemade sausage in buns (impossible to resist). And then there was the bookshop, swimming in sunshine.

It was a tough choice for Lindsay of Ledbury Books and Maps, but eventually she settled on Tigers in Red Weathers.

I’m in Hay on Wye, the town made famous for their amount of bookshops, and I’ve decided to find out how, exactly, a small Welsh town gets filled with book.

The first step was naturally Richard Booth’s Bookshop. Untill a few years ago, there might have been forty bookshops in Hay on Wye, but none of the sold new books. This changed when Richard Booth sold his main bookshop.

It is always depressing for an author when we have to resort to “words fail me”, but when it comes to Richard Booth’s Bookshop, this is very much  tragically the case. Louise still thinks I only bought Richard Booths autobiography King of Books, but in fact, I bought that one at his own bookshop (apparently he couldn’t keep away). At Richard Booth’s, I bought five other ones…

Nick Jarvis of Richard Booth’s Bookshop kindly pointed me along to Pam, who’d worked at the bookshop ever since Richard Booth started it.

“It was very different then. The new owner made quite a lot of changes – very neccessary ones, too. I was with Richard almost when it started.”
So how did the town get so filled with books?
“Well, this was at a time when many people had to sell their large country houses. With large country house libraries. Richard started out with just a small bookshop – I think he’d had a friend who ran a secondhand-bookshop in his Oxford days, and that that inspired him. And then all these old libraries came up for sale, and he just… bought them. And another thing was happening at the same time: young people didn’t automatically follow in their parents footstep. Old people who kept a shop retired, and no one took over, so we had all these empty shops around and Richard, well, he just filled them with books, one at a time.”
What did people think about it?
“Well, not everyone was pleased, but in the end it did a lot of good for the town. Former employees of his opened their own bookshops, and the festival brought in quite a lot of tourism, so the other shops also benefited. When I look back at that time, and the mountains of books, I wonder: how did I ever get through them? I’ve been here quite some years. I could retire of course, but…”
Do you want to?
“Well, no.”

On my way out, it struck me that someone must surely have written about this. “Well, there’s an autobiography by Richard, but I’m not sure if we have it… I can’t see why we don’t. But try The Kingdom of Books. That’s his own bookshop.”
Kingdom of Books?
“Richard proclaimed the town’s independence once. On April 1.”

“So, you’re going to Richard Booth’s Bookshop, Hay on Wye?” the taxi driver asked when she picked me up outside of Bookish. “I have to tell you, finding a specific bookshop in Hay on Wye can be tricky. Finding a bookshop on the other hand is easy.”

I soon discovered that she was right. In the end, she just dropped me off at my hotel, where I checked in and then immediately went out again. I was going to be in Hay on Wye for two nights, so I was saving my real visit to Richard Booth’s Bookshop for tomorrow, but couldn’t resist a sort of preview.

So I walked out, followed the direction the woman at my hotel gave me, and then I just… halted.

They were everywhere. Poetry bookshops, Crime bookshops, general bookshops, small passages leading towards a bookshop, shops buying books. “Good God”, I thought, “how many bookshops can one town really need?”

And then I had a sort of existential crisis at the thought of me (me!) thinking there might be too many bookshops in a town.

But with so many second hand bookshops, did anyone even have books at home? Did the locals read?

“Well, to be honest, I think it’s mainly the tourists that buys the book”, the lady behind the counter at one of them said.
“And … and have there always been this many bookshops?”
“Many! There used to be many more of them, dear. We’re in decline. I think, right now, there’s only about twenty, perhaps. Maybe thirty. There used to be as many as forty. In the nineties, that was the golden age for bookshops. But I guess it’s the same everywhere?”
Err, yes,

I have to admit that I did not know about Richard Booth and book cities and the story behind Hay on Wye. But the next day, I decided to find out.

The only thing small about Bookish on 23 High Street in Crickhowell is its size. I’ve been told that author Adele and illustrator Lizzie, both responsible for the Bookish bestseller The Hedgerow Handbook. I’ve also been promised tea and welshcakes. If I’ve thought about it at all, I’ve probably envisioned something like a traditional book signing, but there’s no sign of it when I enter the store. And when I look around – the gift cards, the little table with childrens book, the shelves lining the walls, and the counter in the corner furthest away – I begin to wonder whether or not anyone could fit a traditional book signing in here. Or, for that matter, tea.

In everything else, however, Bookish is great – in the range of books, for example, or the number of book clubs,and definitely in energy and ambition.

The woman behind the counter is not Emma, the owner, who I’m there to meet. “Hi, you must be Katarina. I recognized you because of the suitcase” – I’m already struggling to lugg it around without accidently knocking something down – “Emma isn’t here at the moment. She’s… out. Somewhere. She’s always running about. Force of nature. I’m Adele. Tea? Let me just clear some books away here by the table, there you go, and a nice cup of tea.”
I got the Go away, I’m writing-cup, but I like to point out here that it was she who decided on it.I can be quite polite.
“Let me just pop out next door and get us some welshcakes.”
And then she was off, leaving me alone in a shop full of books. Big mistake. Huge. But my self control did not let me down, I did not steal a single one.

And then a few minutes later, the shop was full: Emma turned up, with illustrator Lizzie, who also brought along some of her wonderful print. “We’re having an art walk”, Emma explained, “so the shop gives up their windows to showcast art.”

This was after the buy locally-week that were going on right now.

With four people having tea and welshcakes and looking at prints, the shop was almost full. “I would like to have more space”, Emma explained later. “But the problem is – there isn’t really any large shops in Crickhowell.”

This, of course, does not stop Emma. If you cannot squeeze more people into the bookshop, you have to take the bookshop out to the people.

“We’ve got a James Patterson-grant and used crowdfunding, and we’re almost there now.”

She’s planning a Book bus (!).

After tea, she took me out to lunch. “We have nine reading groups at the moment. I think I told Louise they were seven, but then I counted them and realize we have nine. It would be so great if you could come back for the Independent Bookseller Week, I would like to do something with the local library. They’re struggling a bit at the moment.”
I would of course love to come back. Louise is responsible for my schedule, but…
“Great. I’ll just email her and tell her that I took you out to lunch and that we are now great friends and that you would love to come back.”

Which is definitely true. I only hope the Book bus will be ready by then, but otherwise I’ll just have to come back again. And again and again and again.

I’m new on Twitter, and to be honest, I haven’t quite got the hang of it yet. I keep struggling with the word limitations. I need 400 pages to tell a simple story, so the chances of me every managing to keep it short are very slim. But one of the things I do like about it is follow others, so one of the first things I did when I signed up was to start follow Neil Gaiman.

By this point in my journey I’ve asked some twenty or thirty booksellers to recommend just one book, and they’ve all considered it quite a challenge. Probably as challenging as it has been for me to stick to the one book. Until the Neil Gaiman-fan at Rossiter Books. So I tweeted about the easy choice and added Neil Gaiman himself, who retweeted it. Perhaps not surpicingly, quite a few of his followers agreed with the easy choice.

"Just one book? That's easy: anything by @neilhimself Perhaps one illustrated by @chrisriddell50" – @RossiterBooks pic.twitter.com/gljnCBFA5U

— Katarina Bivald (@katarinabivald) March 4, 2015

  So when I visited the second Rossiter Books the day after, on 5 Church Street, Monmouth, and explained what I was doing, I was greeted with: “Ah, yes, you’re the Neil Gaiman-tweet, aren’t you?”

His recommendation was another illustration of the power of booksellers: “I have this favourite, but I keep recommending it so it’s often out of stock. Yes, it is unfortunately. The Art of Fielding.”
Oh, I’ve read that one. It’s amazing.
“Well, this one is almost as good: It’s like a movie by the Coen Brothers, but with more humour.”

And then I couldn’t resist Welsch author Jonathan Edwards – My Family and Other Superheroes.”