A Tale of Two Bookshops - Scarthin Books & Five Leaves

Not a review as such, but a CELEBRATION of two brilliant independent bookshops! If you’re in the area, why not give ‘em a visit?

Scarthin Books, Cromford, Derbyshire

If you love books, Scarthin’s will make you weep. This gem of a shop has three floors of books, old and new, stuffed into every corner. It has a rickety Harry Potter vibe - held up purely by stacks of books and magic. There was even a fundraiser to ensure it didn’t collapse. It’s now better (and safer) than ever.

Along with whole rooms dedicated to Art, Music, and Children, Scarthin’s is creative in its categorising. There used to be a shelf labelled “all of them witches” for their Wiccan/Occult section (which I adored as a teen goth), a shelf near the ceiling of “old books too beautiful to hide”, and an eye-openingly generous section on Cats. You will leave wanting a bigger house.

There’s a wee vegetarian café upstairs and loads of nooks and crannies to explore. Stay a couple of hours! Before the refurb, someone had stuck up a photo of an ambiguous object, asking what it was. I wrote “a weapon of mass destruction” and by my next visit “a real and present danger” had been added.

Book people are the best people, and Scarthin’s is always staffed by bright young things. I was looking at Chomsky’s latest offering and was told “he has written better books”, before being guided over to the epic Politics section.

The layout is dreamy too, having to duck and squeeze through all those old tomes. It would be a wonderful place to take a date; peering over each other’s shoulders and getting to know their taste (one of my first dates with my partner involved browsing films in CeX - a huge success). Scarthin Books is a Labyrinth, a Pandora’s Box, an Aladdin’s Cave. It is one of my fave places on earth.

Click here to visit the Scarthin Books website

Five Leaves Bookshop, City Centre, Nottingham

I’ve only just visited this place, even though it’s been open a few years now. It sits up an alleyway off Market Square, near to not-quite-bookshop The Works. If Scarthin’s is an old wizard, Five Leaves is its younger and hipper cousin.

Five Leaves attracts a radical yet very polite crowd, and the staff leave you alone. Somebody even apologised for having to walk around me, which is amazing as this never happens (I am small, meek and constantly apologising for my own existence). It’s a lovely place for an introvert to go when Nottingham city centre gets too much. I should probably buy something next time though!

Being a one-room shop, they have to be discerning - so you get the best of everything. This is a bookshop run by people who really appreciate knowledge and want to share it with you. It’s all killer and no filler. There are lots of interesting titles that I remember from English Lit and Performing Arts.

You’ll also notice pretty early on that it’s fabulously left-wing. If you’re fond of the phrase “Social Justice Warrior” or “Loony Left”, you may want to sod off sharpish. I enjoyed the choice of Corbyn books, colourful selection of cultures and worldviews, and indie publishers. Five Leaves’ heroes are your heroes. It’s a safe space, down to the noticeboard of therapy hotlines and yoga classes.

Click here to visit the Five Leaves website

Have you got a favourite bookshop near you?

Books and writing and stuff.

Do I buy a Kindle? I literally can't fit many more books in my room, my shelves are bordering on ridiculous and 'Book Mountain' next to my bed has three peaks now.

I'd estimate that I have about a zillion books. But I NEED them all. They make me look way smarter than I actually am.

Kindles are very practical and I'd probably really benefit from one, but at the same time I can see myself moaning "oooh, it's just not the same" on my first digital purchase and then sniffling over a gorgeously battered second-hand copy that I'd found. I know, I'm such a cliche -- my lifestyle is like, totally analogue.

Currently reading Brave New World, which I've been looking to get my hands on for years. Dystopian novels are a personal fave (congratulations everyone for surviving the apocalypse by the way); I like a good reminder of how bad things could get/why we should be preventing them.

If I haven't told you IRL, which is unlikely as I've been telling everyone, I now work for Boots.com as a copywriter. Daisy from Spaced much.

Have a New Year's Eve wedding to attend too, should be lovely! So until my next blog post about books and writing and stuff (to be fair, all my blogging seems to fall into these categories), have a good 'un. In the meantime, here are Mum's wacky words for things...

Baldy-no-nose = Lord Voldemort 

Cotton-wool Pringles = Make-up removal pads

From Russia with love.

Classic Russian literature, Tolstoyevsky, or wallowing in the misery of a poorly made decision for a thousand pages. Like that scene in The Young Ones of the couple huddling around the lamp to reminisce about better times, or trudging through freezing cold snow whilst draped in a bearskin rug.

Joe Wright's film of Anna Karenina was lovely to look at, in a twirly Baz Luhrmann sort of way. Granted I'm not a massive fan of Knightley's acting pouting/frock modelling, but the theatre setting shenanigans were interesting. With about ten other adaptations, we didn't really need the same locations revisited -- it made it a memorable version. The film has a staged, stifling atmosphere (made all the more apparent when you actually go 'outside' the theatre, it's like a breath of fresh air), but it's a good experiment. Would rather like to give the book a try; obviously there's more depth to it than elaborate dance scenes and Princess Betsy's amazing wardrobe.

Ruth Wilson frock envy.

Also need to finish Crime and Punishment, which I started five years ago and still have a hundred pages left to read. It's not that I dislike the book, I think it's brilliant, I just can't stand reading about Raskolnikov's pompous, self-righteous antics; thinking because he's so clever he can bully, mistreat and erm, murder anyone around him. He just irritates me so much! And his poor shivering child of a girlfriend, oh god. Apparently he sees the error of his ways though; I'm probably going to eat my words in the last hundred pages.

Raskolnikov plus appendage, as interpreted by DeviantART.

I know bugger all about modern Russia (I haven't read The Communist Manifesto, but I've seen Fiddler on the Roof a couple of times), but I'm guessing that every other person isn't a Prince or Countess Somebody now. Anna would probably have gotten the same treatment for adultery though, if the whole Kristen Stewart lynch mob is anything to go by -- I know, I'm bang on topic for like JULY.

Parents have just ordered War and Peace on DVD too (which my mister found just as hard-going a read as C & P), so it's looking to be a very Russian winter. Fitting, because it's absolutely freezing.

P.S. What has Ang Lee done to Life of Pi, without the other 'animals' how will it end? Please not "heartwarmingly".

ONLY BY DAYLIGHT.

I don’t usually buy a book based on it’s cover, but this is an exception!