Book shops are places of hope and optimism, mystery and magic, intrigue and intimacy, and if you’re lucky, coffee and a croissant. You may think that’s enough – surely they have exhausted all that they can offer in that extensively enchanting list? Not at all. They all have love stories.
These are not ordinary love stories, although some may argue love stories can never be ordinary, they are book shop love stories. This can include love of books, finding your perfect book shop, “meet cutes” and finding yourself.
How to find love in a book shop by Veronica Henry is set at a book shop called Nightingale Books, which is found in the idyllic Cotswold town of Peasebrook, and the owner is struggling to keep the shop open.
Definitely a holiday read cut out the sounds of chattering sunbed neighbours #bibliotherapy
You’ve got mail, the 1998 re-make of a 1940 film called “The shop around the corner“, is a love story set between the owners of a small independent book shop and a conglomerate store. Director Nora Ephron chose the added magic of a bookshop over the original gift shop to bring home the love story.
Watch this one in Autumn or at Christmas
84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff, is “the very simple story of the love affair between Miss Helene Hanff of New York and Messrs Marks and Co, sellers of rare and secondhand books, at 84 Charing Cross Road, London” (Amazon description). In fact, its her love affair with book sellers, and is the publication of some of the letters exchanged between them from after WWII through to the late 1960’s.
To be read on a cold day, snuggled up with jumper and blanket, hot chocolate or coffee to be transported away from dreary modern offices and into antiquarian book shops #bibliotherapy
The thing with book shops is that they have history. Much like a library, people walk in, browse the books thinking of what they need to satisfy them in their book hunger, and then they take the book away. Other people have walked where you walk, touched the book that you are holding. Think of the many lives that you are sharing by just walking into the book shop.
If you have a story you would like to share, please contact Appletree books at venessaharrisbooks@gmail.com
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