Got Books? podcast review
In my daydreams of one day running a bookshop, uninterrupted by any annoying detail like how to actually make it a viable business, I wander in my mind to Scarthin Books in Cromford, Derbyshire. Scarthin’s four floors once strained so much under the weight of over 100,000 books that it needed to crowdfund emergency structural engineering works and has survived to celebrate its fiftieth birthday last year. I can lose hours in its maze of a dozen or so rooms, reading the tiny notices, trying to narrow down my selection before taking a break in its cosy book-lined cafe for a pot of tea. And for years my ideal of what a bookshop should be was Scarthin mixed in with one from years ago in St Albans that had a trooper of a cat in his twenties, and the one in Stamford with its sideline in taxidermy.
My bookshop of the imagination, the one I’d run when the premium bonds finally pay up, expands with each episode of Got Books?, a podcast for bookshop fans and aspiring bookshop owners.
From her village in Spain, the host Antonia interviews booksellers from around the world, where they take her on virtual tours of their shops, and share the joys and challenges of the business. The first episodes were released in 2021 and offered a chance to experience bookshops without breaking whatever restrictions were in that week. It’s continued as a celebration and examination of the book selling life, but with something of a sporadic release schedule over the last year.
The podcast is for people who love bookshops and who perhaps, like Antonia, would one day like to become a bookseller, but without hiding from the reality that it is unlikely to make you rich and, for some, may not even make you enough for a living.
There are occasional episodes reviewing books, or offering a rundown of miscellaneous niche bookshops, or updating us on Antonia’s progress towards running her own shop, but most follow the format of an interview and focus on a particular interesting and sometimes unusual shop.
Got Books? has taken us around the world. For example, Harmony in Varanasi, India, is so close to the river that the owner builds a protective wall before each monsoon season. Cappelens Forslag is down a side-street in Oslo, Norway, filled with books and assorted oddities to stimulate the imagination such as stuffed animals, a throne so you can read like royalty, a dentists chair, and an old English school desk. And then there’s the Monkey’s Paw in Toronto, Canada, specialising in unusual books from before 1980, such as the Art of Home Cheesemaking, and Bread Sculpture: The Edible Art. For a few Canadian dollars you can buy a token for a random book from the Biblio-Mat the world’s first and possibly only automated vintage book vending machine.
Got Books? is its own Biblio-Mat offering something unique and unusual in each episode. And, while it acknowledges the difficulties faced by independent book sellers, it’s never short of joy and curiosity, two things that I would hope for in my own bookshop. That and a cat, a judgemental cat that has learned to roll its eyes if it disapproves of your purchases.
Got books? is available in all the usual podcast places.
Image: “Wall of Books” by benuski is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.