Bookish Friday is once again coming to you on a Saturday. I’m sorry. When Laura and I first started planning my visit last month to London (and Edinburgh, and the English Countryside), we decided to squeeze in as many bookstore visits as possible. As the manager of an Indie store, we tried very hard not to visit a Waterstones, but admittedly slipped up (we didn’t know Hatchards was owned by them…) Here’s a review of the ones we visited, all of which we loved!
1. Blackwell’s
We visited two Blackwell’s, one in Edinburgh, and the flagship in Oxford. A very well established, family owned chain, there was hardly a thing we couldn’t find here. Favorite part? The mystery books (not the genre, but books wrapped in brown paper pictured below).
2. Daunt Books
The most Instagrammable of all the bookstores in London, Daunt is arranged geographically and includes not only travel books for all parts of the world, but literature from those places as well! A really cool store to browse.
3. Foyles
Foyles’ flagship store on Charing Cross Road in London is five floors, has an epically hipster cafe, and is the shop where I found one of our regular customer’s books on the shelf, along with all of Anthony Bourdain’s books that were all going through reprints here in the states.
4. Hatchards
The oldest bookstore in London deserved a visit, especially after Anthony Horowitz visited the bookstore I work at and told me it was his favorite in London. Downside, we learned it was owned by their chain, Waterstones, which was a bit of a letdown.
Celebration of Books 