On the weekend we celebrated a good friend’s 60th birthday. A lovely time spent with people who know us well, so I may have waxed lyrical about the book, and also had a good moan about the blog. Jane, an ideas girl, said, “why don’t you write about your local bookshop?” Genius!
We live in Devizes, a small but perfectly formed market town in Wiltshire. It’s a lovely place and we are blessed with lots of good cafes, a cinema, any number of independent shops, the usual high street space fillers and the most awesome book shop. It sits in a three-storey, Bath-stone building called Handel House, on Sidmouth St, less than five minutes from the Market Place. It’s an imposing edifice that used to be a music shop. The book store fills the ground floor, up above is an art gallery. I have no idea what is on the third floor and one lives in hope that there is a cellar! The proprietor and her team are knowledgeable, kind, and welcoming. They didn’t hesitate to stock my book though for all they knew, it might have been dreadful. I was a local author so of course they would take it and placed it in a position of prominence. I’d just like to point out that it is a good book, and definitely worth a read, but then I would say that, wouldn’t I?
Devizes seems to be on the way to a lot of places, a town to pass through, but if you do stop, don’t just look for the loo, or a good cup of coffee, come and browse a first class independent book shop. One of the few places left where you can get to grips with the soul of a book and not just its price.
