Booksellers’ Choices Outwith Books


Douglas Stuart’s Young Mungo (Picador) already has a huge Glasgow buzz, and I’m also looking forward to Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh (Cape), Boulder by Eva Baltasar (And Other Stories; author pictured left) and Julian Barnes’ Elizabeth Finch (Cape). Jessica Au’s Cold Enough for Snow (Fitzcarraldo) is also lovely.


Mount Florida Books


Rebecca May Johnson’s book Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen (One)—she’s an exceptional writer and an incredibly good cook. I’m desperate to read Hannah Lavery’s Blood Salt Spring (Polygon) and this spring I’m really looking forward to finally reading Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde (4th Estate, right). From the synopsis, I think it will really hit the spot for me.


a breeze for Argonaut Books. “The pandemic has acted as a multiplier to any already difficult job,” Barclay explains. “Many of the basic business admin processes were made significantly trickier and harder to access by the sudden shiſt to fully digital—everything from propert viewings to contacting the council for basic information. Two years later, everyone is still geting used to working in the pandemic world.”


Another new independent bookshop


rooted in its local communit is Glasgow’s Mount Florida Books, which opened in 2021 following a crowdfunding campaign. Bookshop manager Katia Wengraf explains: “I see the shop as a literary conduit for whatever is happening in the area.” Within its first year of launching, Mount Florida Books was able to use its Christmas profits to buy books for the local primary school and put money towards an organisation which will seek to publish new writing. Wengraf, who was previously manager at


Peckham Review Bookshop in south-east London, where she worked for a decade, realised during the pandemic that she wanted to pivot to running her own bookshop. She previously told The Bookseller that she was inspired to make the move from London to Glasgow during furlough, saying it gave her “a chance to think about what I wanted from life”. Her plans for 2022 include finishing off building works and building up the indie’s customer base. With the premises previously housing a tatoo parlour, there is still a long way to go before the shop feels “done”, its founder shares, joking: “I’d like to get a sign that doesn’t say ‘Art by Zaz Tatoo Studio’.” Outwith Books, also in Glasgow, was opened in November 2020 aſter bookshop manager Natalie Whitle, previously a journalist at FT Weekend, developed a “curiosit and respect” for entrepreneurs


TheBookseller.com


GINGER AND PICKLES BOOKSHOP IN EDINBURGH


and the publishing industry. “Eventually, I decided to scratch the itch and start up my own business, which I combined with a move from London to Glasgow,” Whitle says. Aſter spoting a gap in the market for an independent bookshop in the south of Glasgow, she launched a hybrid writing space with a micro bookshop atached. During the height of the pandemic, she decided to focus on the bookshop element as it was the “most promising side of the venture”. In 2022, she wants to reintroduce the writing space for one person at a time. “Connecting the different stages of writing, from conception to the published book, is one of my aims for Outwith Books—to create a bookshop that is also a useful resource for the writing life,” she says. To get the ball rolling, Whitle is starting a podcast which will be broadcast live from the shop, featuring authors and other professionals from the publishing industry, and she has turned to BookTok to atract customers via the social media platform. Children’s bookshop Ginger and Pickles also braved the storm and launched during the pandemic. The owner Julie Richardson


Ginger and Pickles I am going to go with a


beautiful picture book, I am the Subway by Kim Hyo-eun (below) was r


Scribe Books.


was recently published by Scribe Books.


o-eun (belo ), which ntly published b


Argonaut Books We have just finished


reading our advance copy of Hex by Jenni Fagan (Birlinn) and it’s an early contender for our read of the year. Her Luckenbooth (Cornerstone) was one of our most successful titles over Christmas, with gothic and wider horror titles also performing


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very well, so we have high hopes that readers will love it too.


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signed the lease days before the first lockdown in 2020 and found that opening the Edinburgh shop was “not as bad as most would think”. As well as owning the bookshop, Richardson is a teacher and the school holidays gave her time to plan and prepare. Due to the cost and lack of workers she used her own furniture and second-hand pieces to give the bookshop a warm and friendly feel. The venture opened for business in August 2020.


Richardson is keeping her aims simple: she wants the bookshop to be a memorable place for children who visit, in the same way that she treasures memories of her local library back in Canada. From running monthly competitions for all ages to providing locals with books during the lockdown, Richardson tries to support local and Scotish writers and publishers where she can.


Another Canadian recently launched an indie in Edinburgh. Rachel Wood, who has lived in the cit for 12 years, opened Rare Birds Book Shop in August 2021. It is an extension of Wood’s Rare Birds book club and subscription service, which had been running for four years before the physical store existed. The 1,000 sq ſt store in Raeburn Place, Stockbridge, carries roughly 2,500 fiction and non-fiction titles penned by women, and also sells giſts and stationery. While there was heightened uncertaint during the peak of the pandemic when it came to understanding consumer habits, once shops were finally able to open Whitle believes it became clear that the way people see local commerce had shiſted and “support is really steadfast for all small businesses in the area”. With this backing and the determination of these new bookshop owners, it’s fair to say that a pandemic wasn’t enough to stop Scotland’s indie bookselling scene from thriving.


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