bookshops — Page 9

We awaiting the start of the storm, which won’t be until late afternoon, early evening. The forecast varies. It all depends on the line that will emerge at some point during the storm; those who live above that line will have mostly snow and a lot of it, those who live below will have snow turning to sleet and/or ice. Most forecasts for our area are predicting 8 – 12 inches. However, it seems to be a very fluid situation, so we’ll see.

In the end, we have no choice, do we?

But we’re starting our day with french toast over at Rick and Doug’s. We haven’t seen them for a while; they were traveling and then Rick had some minor surgery, and we were busy, as well. We’re overdue.

My package from John Sandoe Books came yesterday. I’ve been waiting and waiting. When Don came up the drive with a stack of mail and I saw a brown envelope, I shouted out to him “Where’s the brown package from??” He looked down, started to read the label out loud, “John Sandoe…” and he looked up at me and grinned.

I can’t show you all of the package because I don’t want my address revealed, but it looked just like the packages I saw stacked in a corner when we visited the shop in October. I’ll show you bits:

I oh so carefully opened the envelope (I’m saving it, of course) and gently pulled out the inner package.

It was wrapped in this paper.

Oh my! If you know me by now, you know I’m going to frame it.

Again, ever so gently, I removed the paper, doing my best to keep it intact.

And here’s the book:

It was just like I imagined it might be, when I took a picture of that stack of packages waiting to be mailed to customers throughout the British Isles, and beyond. At the time, I thought how cool it would be to live in England and have packages arrive from John Sandoe Books. It wasn’t until I got home and read their IG post on this particular book that I realized I could treat myself to that same pleasure.

I wrote a post about it on IG – you may have seen it – and I spoke of the same things I’ve written about here, as well as a level of customer service that we hardly see anymore. Personal, kind notes via email, a carefully wrapped package, knowledge shared freely and earnestly – I felt as if I had made some new friends across the pond.

Imagine my delight when I saw this note from John Sandoe in response:

See what I mean? Not only a thank you, but a recommendation as well!

Can I move to London simply for the pleasure of visiting John Sandoe Books whenever I want to?

I’m sort of not kidding.

London or Paris. Maybe London with the wonderful option of visiting Paris whenever I want to. That would be heaven for me. I love where I live, but if I had the opportunity to move there, I just might do it.

Hey, I can dream, can’t I?

Okay. Have to get a move on. If you don’t hear from me on Sunday or Monday, we’ve lost power. Fingers crossed that won’t happen.

Happy Saturday.

We’re back home. I wanted to stay there. Seriously.

But home we had to come.

Don took this photo of me in Hyde Park during our last night in London.

I’m still sorting out my emotions and my thoughts and feelings about our trip and everything I learned – about myself and about others. I’ll share some thoughts with you when I’m less jet lagged and slightly more coherent. I will say this: this trip was transformative and profound. And Don and I are closer than ever.

I apologize for falling off the face of the blogging earth but I just didn’t have the time to blog during the last week and a half of the trip. And I wanted to be in the moment as much as I could. I kept up with Instagram because it takes no time and if you follow me there, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what we were doing and seeing. IG is great for that.

I think that over the next week or so, I’ll share memories and photos with you but not necessarily in chronological order. Like today – I thought I’d share a bit about books and bookshops.

Because of the magic of IG, I was aware of two London bookshops that I really wanted to visit and I’m happy to say I got to both of them.

First up is Daunt Books. There are a few locations, I believe, but the one that was only a few blocks from our hotel was Daunt Books in Marylebone. (I chose a hotel in Marylebone because I stayed in a flat in that area when I was last in London – 17 years ago – and I was familiar with the area.) We visited the shop twice and, who am I kidding, I could have gone every day, and every time we visited it was full of book lovers.

Our first visit was in the evening and it did not disappoint. I was unable to explore every inch of the shop because there was a talk and signing scheduled for that evening in the back of the shop.

And in the daytime:

What more could you ask for? A knowledgeable staff, tons of books on all subjects, maps, children’s literature, literary magazines, beautiful wrapping papers. This shop has loyal customers and it’s easy to see why. Both Don and I bought books here and the second time I visited, they gave me a cloth bag with their logo. I was as excited as a little kid.

Then there is John Sandoe Books. A particular instagrammer visits this shop a lot and her photos of the interior made me swoon. So we hopped on the Circle Line and got off in Sloane Square and walked a few blocks to the shop.

I was already about to faint when I saw the outside.

Inside? Absolute heaven.

There’s a downstairs and two narrow winding staircases lead to the upstairs. There are books everywhere.

Photos of authors are everywhere. This is a stairway wall and that’s Sir Ralph Richardson.

Just to the right are shelves of Persephone Books, an imprint that is re-publishing twentieth century female authors. They have their own bookshop, as well, but I didn’t have the time to get there.

Just below the gray Persephones are past editions of Slightly Foxed, a literary quarterly that I follow on Instagram. I’m thinking of subscribing but I wanted to read an edition first. I bought an edition from 2015 here at John Sandoe and I bought the current Fall edition at Daunt Books.

You can see from this photo that I decided on Number 43.

Upstairs.

View from the window seat.

Don took this of me reading. Sitting on the window seat, of course.

I would move to London just to be near these bookshops. I’m not kidding, I’m deadly serious. I love them both, but John Sandoe is the fulfillment of all my bookshop dreams.

Sigh.

I bought these:

Two editions of Slightly Foxed, the literary quarterly, a Persephone edition of Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey, Edward St. Aubyn’s latest, Dunbar, and Parisians by Graham Robb. Don bought a compendium of Orwell’s writings on Truth.

Two more buys, but I must give you a brief back story. I’ve always wanted to collect editions of To Kill a Mockingbird that are written in different languages – actually, I got the idea from Don. If you remember, back when Don was shooting that movie for PBS in Prague, he searched everywhere for an edition in Czech, but couldn’t find one. So I went to Paris hoping to find one in French. But I ended up in a lot of English language bookshops, like Shakespeare and Company, so that didn’t help. Finally, one day on the Right Bank, I walked into a tiny little shop and found it. Huzzah! Then I found a 50th Anniversary edition issued by a London publisher at Daunt Books.

I love them both.

Okay. That’s it for today. We are seriously jet lagged and right now I feel like I’m wading through muck. I have to rest. Our muscles are aching from so much walking, much of it on cobblestones. I can’t even begin to estimate how many miles we walked. And I have to do some coaching on Anastasia Broadway in a few days, so I need to be kind to myself and give myself time to recover and to re-enter.

I missed you.

Happy Thursday.

A Bookish Package

Seriously Jet Lagged, But We’re Home

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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