Finally, it is once again safe to wander around our favourite local bookshops, browsing and finding unexpected tittles, turning over a real book in our hands and marching it up to the tills. Although some things might be a little different, such as exchanging smiles beneath masks and extra hand sanitiser, one thing that will remain the same is the sanity and tranquillity that comes when, as a reader, you can once again return to your natural habitat and pick up a book in a bricks and mortar bookshop.
With their reopening, it’s important for us all to support local bookshops and ensure their survival. These safe havens where us readers can lose ourselves in, are essential to our community.
Although it’s brilliant that we can jump on our phones and browse every book on earth and order it within seconds, there is just something completely different about the feeling of physically being inside a book store, running your finger across the spines of an array of books and deciding on one to take home. It’s not just about the transaction of a purchase, it’s the experience.
With the reopening of bookshops also returns the chance for people to talk to others, for human connection. It feels only right that bookshops reopening coincides with the sun shining fiercer and blue skies above. A sign maybe, that brighter, better days are on the way…ones that we can spend wandering around our favourite bookshops, once again.
Please always support indies. Here’s a list of some of OWN IT!’s favourite local indie bookshops:
New Beacon Books – newbeaconbooks.com
Libreria London – libreria.io
Pages of Hackney – pagesofhackney.com
The Broadway Bookshop – broadwaybookshop.com
Burley Fisher – burleyfisherbooks.com
Stoke Newington Bookshop – stokenewingtonbookshop.com
Newham Bookshop – newhambooks.co.uk
HAPPY READING!
