{"product_id":"browse-isbn-9781782272960","title":"Browse","description":"A celebration of the greatest kind of shop in the world, by an award-winning cast of writers including Ali Smith, Michael Dirda, Elif Shafak and Daniel Kehlmann. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA cabinet of curiosities, a time machine, a treasure trove - we love bookshops because they possess a unique kind of magic. In \u003ci\u003eBrowse\u003c\/i\u003e, Henry Hitchings asks fifteen writers from around the world to reveal their favourite bookshops, each conjuring a specific time and place. These inquisitive, enchanting pieces are a collective celebration of bookshops - for anyone who has ever fallen under their spell. Contributors include Alaa Al Aswany, Stefano Benni, Michael Dirda, Daniel Kehlmann, Andrey Kurkov, Yiyun Li, Pankaj Mishra, Dorthe Nors, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Elif Shafak, Ian Sansom, Iain Sinclair, Ali Smith, Saša Stanišic, and Juan Gabriel Vásquez.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA dazzling collection of original essays about the bookshop by fifteen bestselling international authors. \"Lives up to its inviting title.\" - \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Very worthwhile but not too worthy, this is a timely call to arms.\" - \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eMonocle \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 'All these writers convey the magic of bookshops, while also making their vulnerability in recent times a recurrent theme.' \u003cb\u003e- \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'If you have ever lost yourself in a bookshop, felt the world fall away as you took a book off the shelves, this spell-binding collection will carry you off to shops near, far, lost and imagined.' \u003cb\u003e- \u003ci\u003eMail on Sunday\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Everywhere bookshops are fast disappearing. Sixteen writers from around the world remind us why we should cherish them at all costs.' \u003cb\u003e- \u003ci\u003eSpectator\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘A lovely collection of touching and personal accounts of books and bookshops. Each author’s writing style is unique and transports you across the globe.’ — \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eCub Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'In celebrating bookshops, \u003ci\u003eBrowse\u003c\/i\u003e heralds humanity, with all its glorious eccentricities.' \u003cb\u003e- \u003ci\u003eCountry Life\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eHenry Hitchings is an award-winning writer, reviewer and critic. He has written for the \u003ci\u003eGuardian, London Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eTLS, Financial Times\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eNew Statesman\u003c\/i\u003e, and is currently the \u003ci\u003eEvening Standard\u003c\/i\u003e's theatre critic. He is the author of several acclaimed books on language, literature and culture, including \u003ci\u003eDr Johnson's Dictionary\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eHow to Really Talk About Books You Haven't Read\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Language Wars\u003c\/i\u003e. In 2008, he was shortlisted for the title of \u003ci\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e Young Writer of the Year, and in the same year his book \u003ci\u003eThe Secret Life of Words\u003c\/i\u003e won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award.From time to time over the past few years I’ve done\u003cbr\u003e volunteer stints a few hours a week selling books\u003cbr\u003e at our local Amnesty International second-hand\u003cbr\u003e bookshop, Books for Amnesty. I live in a university town\u003cbr\u003e in the south of England and the book donations that come\u003cbr\u003e in, sometimes seven or eight in a plastic bag, sometimes a\u003cbr\u003e whole vanful, a house clearance, someone’s whole library,\u003cbr\u003e are endlessly interesting, tend towards the eclectic and are\u003cbr\u003e almost always unexpected repositories of the lives they’ve\u003cbr\u003e been so close to.\u003cbr\u003e Open this copy of \u003ci\u003eBallerinas of Sadler’s Wells \u003c\/i\u003e(A. \u0026amp;\u003cbr\u003e C. Black Ltd, 1954) with its still bright-orange-after-sixty-\u003cbr\u003e years cover and its black and white photo of Margot\u003cbr\u003e Fonteyn on the front, its original price of six shillings on\u003cbr\u003e the back (now selling at £2). In blue ink on its first page,\u003cbr\u003e in neat child’s handwriting: \u003ci\u003eChristmas 1954 To Caroline\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/i\u003e. Tucked in beside this there’s a postcard\u003cbr\u003eof a swaggering tabby cat wearing a collar, and written on\u003cbr\u003e the back of it in an adult hand in faded blue, \u003ci\u003eDARLING\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eCAROLINE, PLEASE do send me a list of things you\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003ewould like to have so that I can have some help to find\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eYOU a birthday present. I shall be stopping at LIZZIE’S\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003enext week so please tell Nannie that my address will be\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eTrumpeter’s House. Lots of love xx from Mamma xxxxx\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eI thought Papa’s present from you lovely.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Or inside \u003ci\u003eThe Book of the Art of Cennino Cennini\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e (Allen and Unwin, 1930) a ticket, single, dated 20th July\u003cbr\u003e 1936, Chatham and District Traction Company.\u003cbr\u003e Or inside an American first edition of \u003ci\u003eThe Buck in the\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eSnow \u003c\/i\u003eby Edna St Vincent Millay (Harpers and Brothers,\u003cbr\u003e 1928) a business card for Miss Katzenberger’s Piano\u003cbr\u003e Lessons and an address in Queens, New York.\u003cbr\u003e We leave ourselves in our books via this seeming detritus:\u003cbr\u003e cigarette cards with pictures of trees or wildlife; receipts\u003cbr\u003e for the chemist; opera or concert or theatre tickets; rail\u003cbr\u003e or tram or bus tickets from all the decades; photographs\u003cbr\u003e of places and long-gone dogs and cats and holidays; once\u003cbr\u003e even a photo of someone’s Cortina. Now when I donate\u003cbr\u003e books to the shop I have a flick through to make sure that\u003cbr\u003e anything tucked into them isn’t something I might mind\u003cbr\u003e losing.\u003cbr\u003e The volunteers, like the books, are of all ages and all\u003cbr\u003e lifewalks. They all have some things in common; they’re\u003cbr\u003e doing this for nothing, for Amnesty, most of them because\u003cbr\u003e they really love books, many of them because they love the\u003cbr\u003eshop, and all of them because they’re community-minded.\u003cbr\u003e It’s quiet in there, browsy, passers-by getting out of the\u003cbr\u003e rain, regulars who love the place and know that its stock\u003cbr\u003e can be curiously timely—it’s not unusual to hear someone\u003cbr\u003e exclaim out loud at finding just the book she needs or\u003cbr\u003e he’s been looking for all this time—and the occasional\u003cbr\u003e rogue, like the slightly drunk man who chatted to me for\u003cbr\u003e a bit at the cash desk then said, as he left: I was actually\u003cbr\u003e planning on shoplifting from here but since you’re Scottish\u003cbr\u003e I won’t. I called after him as he went out the door: If\u003cbr\u003e you’re going to shoplift don’t do it from a charity shop,\u003cbr\u003e for God’s sake. He gave me a wave and a smile through\u003cbr\u003e the window.\u003cbr\u003e Here are some of the things he could’ve lifted that\u003cbr\u003e day. A Leonard Woolf novel called \u003ci\u003eSowing\u003c\/i\u003e, signed inside\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eElizabeth from Leonard, Christmas 1962 \u003c\/i\u003e(the Leonard who\u003cbr\u003e wrote it?). Another Leonard, a biography of Bernstein,\u003cbr\u003e definitely signed by the actual Leonard himself in a sloping\u003cbr\u003e hand. A copy of Axel Munthe’s \u003ci\u003eThe Story of San Michele\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003cbr\u003e signed and dedicated by Munthe \u003ci\u003eto Lady Astor\u003c\/i\u003e. A ragged\u003cbr\u003e copy of \u003ci\u003eA Girl Like I \u003c\/i\u003eby Anita Loos, in which someone\u003cbr\u003e has scrawled in claw-hand on the first page, \u003ci\u003epArts Of tHis\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eboOk are VERy sAD\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e For every book I donate myself—and this is the problem\u003cbr\u003e with a shop like this—a new-bought old book or two, or\u003cbr\u003e three or four, tend to come home with me. So much for\u003cbr\u003e culling. But what can you do, when you pick up \u003ci\u003eHunter’s\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eGuide to Grasses, Clovers and Weeds\u003c\/i\u003e, 1978 (now £3); flick\u003cbr\u003ethrough it and find out that there are kinds of grass called\u003cbr\u003e Timothy and Lucerne, that Timothy came from the US in\u003cbr\u003e the 1720s, and Lucerne can’t be hurt by drought because\u003cbr\u003e its roots go so deep? Or 1964’s \u003ci\u003eNational Rose Society\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eSelected List of Varieties \u003c\/i\u003e(now £2.50); open it at any page\u003cbr\u003e and look what happens: \u003ci\u003eOberon\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eOhlala\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eOld Pink Moss\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eOpera. Ophelia. Optimist, the\u003c\/i\u003e. The entry after \u003ci\u003eOptimist,\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003ethe\u003c\/i\u003e, simply says: “See \u003ci\u003eSweet Repose\u003c\/i\u003e”\u003ci\u003e.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e My favourite find so far has been a copy of Lawrence’s\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eBirds, Beasts and Flowers\u003c\/i\u003e, not worth much in money terms,\u003cbr\u003e apparently, being a second edition. But open it and on its\u003cbr\u003e first page someone’s stuck a photograph, a young woman\u003cbr\u003e in a bathing suit sitting in long grass by the bank of a river,\u003cbr\u003e looking in a mirror to do her make-up. Above it, in black\u003cbr\u003e ink, in a sweeping hand, \u003ci\u003eF.N.LW. from P.A. Sept. 1933. \u003c\/i\u003eThe\u003cbr\u003e first bit of the book has been well-read. The later pages\u003cbr\u003e are still uncut.\u003cbr\u003e Then there’s the \u003ci\u003eFrescoes from Florence \u003c\/i\u003eexhibition\u003cbr\u003e catalogue 1969, an Arts Council publication covering the\u003cbr\u003e late 1960s European tour. This book, I’d noticed, comes\u003cbr\u003e in quite regularly. It always sells. When I saw the third or\u003cbr\u003e fourth copy come in I picked it up and leafed through it\u003cbr\u003e at the desk. “As is explained by Professor Procacci in his\u003cbr\u003e introduction, the removal of these frescoes often laid bare\u003cbr\u003e the underdrawing, or sinopia, beneath.” I opened it at a\u003cbr\u003e page where there was a description of a sinopia in which\u003cbr\u003e a woman was holding a small boy by the hand, “later\u003cbr\u003e eliminated by the artist, who painted over that portion”.\u003cbr\u003eThe restorers uncovered him, invisible for centuries, and\u003cbr\u003e there all along.","brand":"Pushkin Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303889031397,"sku":"NP9781782272960","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781782272960.jpg?v=1767723118","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/browse-isbn-9781782272960","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}