While I should be writing

The Edinburgh bookshop is a lovely little gem of a bookshop located on 219 Bruntsfield Place. I set out to find it the moment I had checked into my hotel, after approaching the receptionist for some instructions on how to find it. She immediately grabbed a tourist map and marked the castle and the parliament before I had time to tell her that naturally I was here for the bookshops.

I turned up in the bookshop at the same time as Samantha Shannon was there signing books while doing research for another, so after following the Edinburgh Bookshop recommendation I got a signed copy.

And that’s not all. Now, it’s a lovely bookshop, and I remember being absolutely charmed by it even before the woman working there introduced me to THE LADDER. But after I met it, few other things mattered. They have a book ladder. One of those Beauty and the Beast-thing, that you can pull out and move across the shelves and use to reach the top shelves.

And authors get to sign it. Apparrently a drawing competition has started between the authors after one of them started drawing things. Samantha Shannon gloriously rose to the challange, while I stuck to words. My sister draws. I do not. Both of us naturally chose high places for our inscribing – if you get the chance to climb a book ladder, surely you take it?

I enclose a photo of the view from up there.

After my four bookshops and at least as many train rides, I was running late. This, of course, was not Louise’s fault. She’d prepared an excellent schedule with suggestions on what trains to take and where. Unfortunately I had to spend some one, one and a half hour, at Kings Cross finding the right train, so when I was finally approaching Cambridge, the question on both of our minds was: would I make it to Heffers in time, before they closed at six o’clock (the opening and closing hours were of course also on The schedule).

As I was leaving the next day for Edinburgh, tonight was my only chance to see the legendary Cambridge bookshop. On a more personal level, I also worried that I would turn out to be that customer, the one that comes in four minutes to closing and isn’t even sure what she wants.

So I did what anyone would have done and grabbed a cab from the train station, shouting as I got into it: “To the bookshop! And hurry!”

It was quite a nice feeling, actually, and it made me wonder why I hadn’t done it before. Surely the need for books have been acute and overwhelming before?

But I made it. With some twenty minutes to spare. I even managed to resist buying the lovely reading set in wood, finally deciding that it was unpractical for travels.

Their recommendation: H is for Hawk.

Ely is a town full of charm and beauty, and home to one of the most magnificent cathedrals in England. More importantly, it is also home to the even more charming and beautiful Topping & Company Ely. If you visit Ely’s tourist information webpage, the bookshop is not even listed under “Attractions”! I feel like writing them a letter about it.

The shop covers several floors, offers complimentary tea and coffee, and even has a bookshop dog, peacefully asleep under one of the tables.

Before I tell you about their recommendations, let me just say that they were very small and cost almost nothing. “You get five of them for the price of a cup of coffee. And you can have one here anyway, complimentary!”

Which is very true. And besides, they were lovely small little books.

Their recommendation? The Crocked House.

Bonus: Five of Penguin Little Black Classics.

Spalding is a market town with a population of 28,722 (2011 census) on the River Welland in the South Holland district of Lincolnshire, England. And it is here you’ll find Bookmark.

I have to confess that I’ve never been able to watch You’ve got mail without secretly preferring Fox Books to Meg Ryan’s A bookshop around the corner. Well, Bookmark in Spalding is like a bigger and better version of Meg Ryan’s shop, and it has a café. Fox Books wouldn’t stand a chance. It is also filled with toys made of wood, giving it all a charming, timeless feel; like bookshop and childrens store should be, or like something out of an old movie about Christmas.

“Well, there’s the train, where they can sit, read and, see, even drive. And a pond, with fishes. So yes, I think it’s quite a good place to be a child. And they sometimes cry when they have to leave.”

I can definitely see why. In fact, I’m not sure I won’t cry when I have to leave.

Their recommendation: The Rosie Effect (already read), A Man Called Ove (actually originally published by my Swedish publisher), and, then, The Invention of Wings, which sounds absolutely lovely.

My only disappointment was that I did not myself get to ride the train. That, however, might change in the future:

@katarinabivald Thank you so much for coming, it was lovely to meet you and talk books! (We would have let you have a go on the train!)

— Bookmark Spalding (@BookmarkLincs) February 20, 2015

They won’t be able to keep me away in June. I only hope I can do it with a little bit of dignity, e.g. not throw smaller children of it in my hurry to get there, not cry when I have to leave, and remember to share with the other children.