Department
Bookshops
Independent bookshops in small UK towns, Daunt Books interior, Powell's at midnight, a 9-shelf bookshop in central Tokyo.
The Strand Dollar Carts at Closing
An hour spent watching the closing-time ritual at the dollar carts outside the Strand Bookstore at Broadway and East 12th in Manhattan, where the day's final markdowns and the wheeling-in of the carts constitute an unsentimental piece of New York bookselling theatre.
The Subscription Shop in Ennistymon
A small bookshop in a north Clare market town, operating on an annual subscription model under which members receive one curated book a month and access to a small lending library, considered as one experimental answer to the economics of rural bookselling.
Behind the Till at Shakespeare and Company
A week working in the rue de la Bûcherie bookshop opposite Notre-Dame, observing the operational realities of a bookshop that has become a literary tourist destination while still functioning as a working bookseller of new and second-hand titles.
The City Lights Staircase After Seventy Years
A long afternoon in the upstairs poetry room at City Lights Booksellers on Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, considered both as a working bookshop and as a literary institution that has carried a particular editorial position since Lawrence Ferlinghetti opened it in 1953.
The Nine Shelves of Morisaki
A small bookshop in the Jimbocho district of Tokyo, run by a man who carries only nine shelves of stock at any time and rotates the inventory completely every three months, considered as a model of editorial bookselling at the smallest possible scale.
Powell's City of Books, After Eleven
A late shift in the Burnside Street flagship of Powell's, the Portland used-and-new bookshop that occupies a full city block, when the foot traffic has thinned and the booksellers begin the long re-shelving of the day's churn.
Daunt Books, Marylebone, by Quarter Light
An hour inside the Edwardian galleried interior of Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street, where travel is shelved by country and the oak runs to the skylight, considered as both a working bookshop and a piece of preserved retail architecture.
The Narrow Shop on Fore Street
A morning at Bartram & Sons, a fifty-three-year-old bookshop in the Devon market town of Totnes, where the till still rings with a bell and the back room holds 11,000 second-hand titles arranged by an interior logic only the owner fully understands.