While I should be writing

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.”

I think Louise was afraid that local buses were beyond my skill, so for Wales, she had pre-booked taxis to pick me up at regular intervalls for the next bookshop. So in due time I was collected by Abbey taxi to take me to The Corn Exchange, 7 The High Street, Ross-on-Why, Herefordshire.

The taxi driver very kindly pointed out places of local history, all the best fishing spots, and every snowdrop we passed, until we reached Rossiter Books in Ross-on-Wye.

“Hello, my name is Katarina Bivald”, I said, and then I got to vary my prepared speech by saying: “I have a delivery for you.”
“Brilliant. You’ve made a customer very happy.”
Always happy to help a fellow desperate booknerd.

As always, I told him about my trip and my one-book-rule, and asked him to recommend anyting he himself had loved. “I get to choose?” he said.
“Anything at all”, I said.
“Well, that’s easy. Anything by Neil Gaiman.” He took me to the fiction shelves and pointed to the three paperback novels of Gaiman they had in store.
“I’ve read American Gods”, I said (brilliant book).
“Hm. If you’ve read his adult fiction, maybe one of his illustrated book? Perhaps this one, with illustrations by Chris Riddell.”

Excellent choice, I think.

On Wednesday, March 4, I took a taxi from Bristol across the bridge into Wales. The taxi driver enthused over Bristol the entire way, and rightly so.

“You know Banksy, right?”
I did, yes.
“Well, he’s from around here of course, and the guy that tought him everything. I drive him all the time, but he’s just like a regular person, you know? That what Bristol does. We’re not stuck up or anything. And lots of great music. I was in Vegas with my best friends for a stag night, and they had all these bands, with tickets costing an arm and a leg, and I just thought: But I’ve already seen them, in Bristol? And you could just walk down the street and go into all these different clubs, for free, and hear som great music. But Vegas was nice too. Don’t get me wrong. I couldn’t party for four straight days, but my friend, the one who was getting married, he definitely tried to. The rest of us took it a it easier. We’re older now, you know? Wives and kids. Couldn’t do it. And then we all got some sort of food poisoning or something on the way home and came home completely worn out. Didn’t get much sympathy from me wife, though. You’ve been away from the kids having fun, and then you come home and expects to be able to rest? She got a point, too. So what are you doing in Chepstow?”
Oh, visiting the bookshop, of course.

The Chepstow is located on St. Mary Street, in Chepstow, Monmouthshire. Their recommendation: Any Human Heart, by William Boyd. And then we hung around, talking about my epic trip and my book, until Matt said: “Are you by any chance visiting Rossiter Books afterwards?”
I was indeed.
“Then perhaps… I wonder, could you do me a favour and deliver this book to them? Apparently it’s the last copy in the area, and a customer of theirs needed it urgently. I was going to head down to the post office, but if you’re going there…?”

Naturally I was only too happy to oblige, but I wondered if it was really wise to entrust a book to a booknerd. Do not steal the book, do not steal the book kept going through my head.

I didn’t even peak inside the bag, so now I don’t know which book it was that I was strong enough not to steal. I thought it was best not to tempt myself.

Yes, I walked around in circles for a while trying to find Foyles in Bristol, but it is a truth universally acknowledge that if a booknerd only walks in circles long enough, she will eventually find herself in front of a bookshop.

As usual, I explained the one-book-rule, but Foyles were too sneaky for me. “We’ll just recommend one each, and then you can choose between them.”

Likely.

I also managed to find my way to Stanfords, a beautiful bookshop selling quite a lot of maps and travel books, which they also recommended to me. And they remembered to thank their mom for Mother’s Day.

And then I ended the evening at The Old Bookshop, which was not a bookshop but a café/bar. Editing is much more fun if you have type writers over the window in front of you.

Brendon Books is located in Bath Place in Taunton; a lovely shop in a lovely town.

Their recommendation for me? Some local history, and a local true crime (I got the first one as a gift!)