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Pirate Man used to work in Soup Dragon - the toyshop beside the Post Office in Crouch End, not sure if he still does.
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Apparently Prospero’s in CE is going to be a Soho Style ice cream parlour
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AFTER a highly successful soft launch last Sunday at Kiss The Sky, Robin (who wears 18 th Century dress) will be at the Devonshire House pub in Crouch End on Wednesday from 10 - 5pm and at the wonderful Library Cafe, Hornsey Library (next to the Unlibrary) on Thursday from 10 - 5pm.
" Call in and visit us, buy some of our lovely books provided via Big Green Books of Wood Green" -
And I bought a book! (Today) beer and books perfect combo.
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Well, this came up via twitter today. Maybe there's going to be a new bookshop!
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What what what? Do tell.
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Interesting how Twitter has been uploading their users entire contacts for the phone without explicit permission - bit naughty
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What are you on about, Ali? I didn't see anything. Facebook did that, by the way. That's naughty.
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Wouldn't the soon-to-be-ex-Utopia be a perfect place for a new bookshop? Or basically anywhere, true - but it would be great to have something like a bookshop opening up there! (Buy a book, take it across the road to Vagabond and read it over many coffees).
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Where is Utopia?
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It's the cheap clothing shop next to Tesco. They've had a "closing down" sale for the last few days (but it wasn't worth commenting on).
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Oh, I didn't put the link on! It was asking for a bookseller to work in a new bookshop in N8.
That clothing shop is way to small for a bookshop to stock any range. Going back to my comment early in the thread, does anyone here spend more than £30 a month on actual, real live, physical books - not ebooks?
@Ali, what phone contacts? Surely no one would be dense enough to put their phone number anywhere on their twitter account.
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Some months I spend £30 on books - generally if there are birthdays and the like, sometimes just because there are a lot of things I want on eBay at the same time. I only really get free ebooks, mostly public domain classics but also the odd promotional one.
And every month I spend about £30 on comics, which is basically just stealing a march on the 'graphic novels' section. -
Over the course of the year I spend that+ on books - a big spend pre-summer holiday, then another before Xmas - but I spend it mostly at Amazon. Don't have to leave the house, pay for delivery or schlep it back home on public transport (I'm self-banned from Waterstone's Piccadilly after going in there one time and coming out with 32 books) - plus the discounts mean I get more book for my buck. I know that's not going to make @miss annie happy... though I would be interested to know more about the new bookshop in N8. I wasn't wild about Prospero's, but it would be nice to have a bookshop up there.
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Posted on wrong thread
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Oh I do understand that people find Amazon very convenient, but even if didn't work at Waterstones I would always shop at bookshops. I love browsing, having a chat with booksellers and just rummaging about and finding unexpected treasures. Also the lovely smell in traditional, bonkers, bookshops like Heywood Hill or Hatchards, although you can get that at home now http://www.assouline.com/9782843234590.html
I'm not a fan of internet shopping at all really, although I do buy some fabrics from the States that I've seen in shops there but just can't get here.
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Why don't we approach Mind and ask them to actively have a books section and promote things there?
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It's tricky. Charity bookshops undercut normal bookshops, and I've never come across a charity bookshop that was as good as a good normal bookshop.
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@miss annie, a book-scented candle is quite possibly one of the daftest things I've ever heard of - good find!
I love charity bookshops for craft books - normal bookshops don't tend to have great craft selections. The Animal Aid shops on Blackstock Road and the British Red Cross bookshop in Palmers Green are both good, if anyone's feeling deprived (but hands off the needlepoint books...!).
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I find the Amazon, 'buy it, with one click' lethal. I started with books, but now have a large running machine in my living room, bought with 'one click'.
The Waterstones on Torrington Place is really growing on me. Great for text books. I do a course at Birkbeck and normally pop in there and spend too much. Their loyalty schemes seem quite convoluted, so much fiddling with bits of plastic and little cardboard things. I'm normally given a £10 gift card because I've spend over certain amount. I get my loyalty card swiped, and then a little cardboard thing that receives several stamps.The Oxfam shop in Crouch End is great for books on film. -
@miss annie: "way to small for a bookshop to stock any range"
Wrong.
"Maybe there's going to be a new bookshop!" ... "a new bookshop in N8."
Ah, N8 being otherwise known as "Stroud Green Heights". -
Muswell Hill has a good bookshop. They used to have a book speed dating night to drum up trade. It was quite surprising but I only went once. Harry Potter (aka Chang)
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32 books? I'm guessing Asterix or Dr. Seuss.
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Well, as fiction books are a dying market let's say that you'd just need a moderate fiction section, then classics, cookery, art, children's books (sales of which are dramatically increasing) travel, biography, history and politics, business and the clumsily named 'smart thinking' - Gladwell, Ronson, Hitchens etc. Pregnancy and childcare would probably do well here and if you wanted to you could stock plays, new age, health, humour, craft and hobbies, natural history/pets, gardening, academic/study guides (a good idea with the college nearby), languages, sci-fi/fantasy, manga/graphic novels, driving test stuff, citizenship test (bestseller).
What would you leave out? Or should it be a specialist shop like Beacon?
The second someone comes in and you don't have the book or subject that they want, a post will appear here telling all and sundry that 'the shop is useless because they don't have ...' Or they will get you to spend ages looking up all the publisher details and ordering details for them and then go off and order it from Amazon. Or they will complain at the price because you won't be able to discount everything to half price as you have to pay the extortionate rent and rates.
I just don't believe that SG would be able to support a bookshop if Crouch End couldn't.
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@Miss Annie,
Depressingly, I'm sure you're right, but didn't the Crouch End place close because the landlord hiked the rent rather than because it wasn't making any money?In good news, the big green bookshop up in Wood Green have paid off their loan and should be safe. Well, safe-ish. -
That's splendid news. Prospero's was a combination of the rent hike and not enough punters.
I have recently discovered Clerkenwell Tales, owned by an ex Waterstones chap, it's good. If you find yourselves down Clerkenwell way pop in.
Some of you may have heard of World Book Night http://www.worldbooknight.org/index.php?stay=true
There is also this http://helpineedapublisher.blogspot.com/2011/02/our-world-book-night.html, which I think is better (all views my own and all that).
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Clerkenwell Tales is very near my work, so I've popped in a few times, but never been at all inspired. It too closely mirrors the books covered in recent broadsheet review sections, whereas surely if a bookshop is to retain appeal in the age of Amazon, it must deal in the delightfully unexpected.
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I popped into Mind today and told them to read this thread - see if they could up the ante on the book offerings. FYI
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