Well, three days is a long time to go without a bookshop, and sometimes you just need a break in the editing, and … well, Katie Clapham of Storytellers Inc. (more on that later) asked me whether or not I had been to Sam Reads, and I naturally changed my plans so that I could do so.
I am certainly grateful I visited. Such a beautiful bookshop, such a great selection of books, such a passion for poetry.
At Sam Reads I also got my very first poetry recommendation: Division Street by Helen Mort and Shadow Dispatches by Polly Atkin.
Sam Read Bookseller has existed for some 150 years in Grasmere, ever since Sam Read followed his name to the obvious conclusion and opened a bookshop.
Beautiful bookshop in a beautiful townTheir recommendation - and my very first poetry recommendationEvery bookshop needs a Wordsworth andMaritime fiction shelf.Unfortunately I also bought a few more books, slowly descending into book-buying anarchy
I had decided before to take three days off in the Lake District to get some writing done (formal reason) and to just hang around in the area where Beatrix Botter wrote and drew and that she worked so hard to protect (true reason).
And I defy anyone to find a better place to edit your book. One day I’ll come back here and write another.
Naturally, I also visited Hill Top Farm, where I immediately became a member of the National Trust. “If you’re from Sweden you might not get that many advantages”, said the lovely woman working behind the till. “But otherwise there’s free admissions, and free parking…”
Which is kind of sad, now that I think of it, that people only agree to help protect our beautiful places and historical landscapes if there is free parking. “We look after the places you love: historic houses, gardens, mills, coastline, forests, farmland, moorland, islands, castles, nature reserves, villages….” – “Yes, yes, my good woman, but the parking.”
For making such a fuzz about being a cold, formal people, the English sure knows how to use endearments. I’ve heard happily married Swedish couples use less in a lifetime than the average English waitress get through in an hour.
They’d heard the news about potential flooding, and prepared accordingly: emptied the floors, removed the books from some of the lower shelves. Of course, the flooding reached a bit higher than that…
“I guess in the end it turned out all right”, said Catherine, the current owner and second generation bookseller in Cockermouth. Her mom still occasionally helps out in the shop, as she does the day I visit. “We got the chance to re-do quite a lot, but in a café… you can’t really change anything once you’re open and always selling books. Of course, it didn’t really feel like it when I came saw all those books, drenched and ruined.”
“It must have been a very sad sight”, I said.
“Yes, it was. But all us shopowners here were in the same situation, so that helped. You just had to get through it.”
And get through it they did, of course. The New Bookshop in Cockermouth is a beautiful bookshop in a beautiful town.
Her recommendation for me? The Snow Child by Euwyn Ivey.
