In this episode, I chat with Chrissy Ryan, the owner of BookBar, an independent bookshop, cafe and wine bar, events and social space centered around celebrating the social side of reading.
Chrissy's tale is not just about the mingling of books and wine; it's a celebration of community, a confluence of conversation starters, and a testament to the connective power of stories. From the unique 'Books and Bangers' DJ nights to the innovative 'Shelf Medicate' program, discover how Bookbar turns the solitary act of reading into a shared cultural experience.
Join us as we reflect on our personal narratives, including the idyllic Barefoot Bookseller experience, and the return to the urban landscape where Bookbar stands as a beacon for those yearning for both escapism and connection. Your next favorite readâor perhaps your next convivial book club discussionâawaits within this episode.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin
A Heart That Works, Rob Delaney
The Bookshop Podcast
Mandy Jackson-Beverly
Social Media Links
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Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson Beverly.
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Welcome to the Bookshop podcast .
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Each week, I present interviews with independent bookshop
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owners from around the globe, authors, publishing
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professionals and specialists in subjects dear to my heart the
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environment and social justice.
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To help the show reach more people, please share it with
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friends and family and on social media, and remember to
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subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this
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podcast.
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You're listening to episode 244 .
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Bookbar is a bookshop, wine bar, events and social space
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centered around celebrating the social side of reading.
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At Bookbar, they believe there's nothing better than
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sharing a good book, the joy of unraveling the characters and
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plot points with a friend over a glass of wine or coffee.
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Bookbar brings people together through events and creates
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community around books, with music readings, wine tastings
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and yes, even books and bangers a DJ night in the bookshop.
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Bookbar's prescription program, shelf Medicaid, is designed for
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anyone who has the desire to pick up a book.
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Their book club welcomes readers from around the UK to
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read a book and attend a virtual author event each month.
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Hi, chrissy, and welcome to the show.
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It's great to have you here.
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Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me, Mandy.
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I'm really grateful to be here.
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Speaker 1: I saw your bookshop online and, of course, I went
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down rabbit holes doing some research about you and your
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adventures and I thought I need to have Chrissy on the show to
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talk about what she's done.
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So let's begin with learning about you and what drew you to
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Open Bookbar.
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Speaker 2: It's tricky to know where to start, without going
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into my full life story, because I think when something like
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this happens, it's so often been something that has been
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germinating for a long time, and I'm sure that's true of lots of
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the booksellers that you interview, and for me I would
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say that the romantic answer is that I'd always wanted to have
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my own bookshop.
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I think there's sort of evidence in my diaries of me sort of
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doing my A-levels which I guess I like my SATs, or when I was 18
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and going oh, I just wish that I could just not do my exams and
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open a bookshop instead.
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And I remember finding those little excerpts over lockdown
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and while I was setting up Bookbar and thinking, well, this
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is funny, this is kind of all come full circle.
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And I have a friend of my mums who would say, you know, who
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still says that the first time she met me when I was about 12
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or 13, she asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up and
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I said something like, oh, I just would love to have my own
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bookshop and cafe.
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And that was obviously before I discovered alcohol and
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introduced the booze as well.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, but it worked and that's great.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: And the background is to do with books too.
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You were in publishing right.
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Speaker 2: Yes, yes, exactly.
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So I had always been a big reader and book lover but sort
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of thought I'd go on to do something, not in the industry.
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As I moved to London to do a masters and got a job in a
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bookshop and loved it and sort of I guess like found the thing
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I was best at you know, it was books and it was people and I
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thought, wow, like I want to do this for a living, and ended up
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working in publishing in sales, both in UK sales and then export
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sales, so selling books to bookshops and organisations
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around the world, basically, which was great fun.
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And while I was there, the instinct or the thought that I
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would love to have my own bookshop was kind of always
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there and I would make you know just little, just any ideas that
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came to mind.
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I would just keep in a little notebook, and bookbar was always
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the kind of working title that I didn't really like at the time
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.
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But when I came to make the decision for the name, it was
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the one thing that explained what we did best and I thought
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that needed to be.
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That felt really important, that people knew exactly what we
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did from the offset, you know.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a great name and it's nice and
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short.
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About a month ago I interviewed Valerie Kolo.
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She is the owner of Blue Willow Bookshop and she said she
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wished she'd had a shorter name because when you're in a hurry
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and you pick up the phone and you've got to say good morning,
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blue Willow Bookshop.
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But it can be a real mouthful.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the sort of thing that you don't realise
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when you're setting it up.
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That is important, you know, and just having something pithy
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and clear about really important .
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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's succinct, that's for sure.
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Now, what caught my attention in your website's about section
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was the phrase quote.
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It's never about how many books you've read that year or
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whether you've read the latest prize winners at Bookbar Books
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are Social.
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Do you see this idea as a reflection of the success of
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Bookbar?
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Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah.
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I think that the whole ethos of Bookbar is to celebrate what
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makes independent bookshops really important, which is that
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all bookshops are social spaces, whether customers realise it or
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not, because they are spaces where you're interacting with
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other people's ideas in book form.
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But also, you know, they are spaces because you talk about
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books.
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You end up having conversations , and I really wanted to
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communicate that to people who didn't necessarily realise that.
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So I think that that's been something that's really
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important to everything we do I talk about.
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Bookbar's mission is to celebrate the social side of
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reading, and everything we do is about bringing people together
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through books, and that's why we serve the coffee and the wine.
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It's to encourage people to linger and interact with one
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another in a what is quite a small space.
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You know, book bar, the physical shop is not enormous.
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So it's about getting people to stay in the space for a while
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and engage with the books, engage with us and, as you know,
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the booksellers, and also, if they want, to engage with each
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other, and that's been a massive part of our success, I think,
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is that, yeah, we really, really encourage people to recommend
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books to one another in the space.
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We have a whole wall downstairs With chalk pens where people can
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just put on their own recommendations and we have sort
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of prompts you know I'm their favorite cozy read or whatever
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I'm but people just add their own and interact with each other
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that way and that encourages all is a reflection of one or
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the other, the way that people are interacting in the shop.
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And yeah, by sitting down having a glass of wine, we get people
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who sit and maybe they ask us for a recommendation.
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We start pulling out some books .
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We do a bit of kind of personal shopping in a way, which you
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know is is what all booksellers are doing with their hand
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selling.
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We encourage them to sit down with a, with a coffee or a glass
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of wine, while we kind of build a stack for them, and that
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means that people often get talking to one another because
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they've never hear us recommending something, or
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someone says I love this to us, and then, next thing, you know
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the person sitting next to me to read this.
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You know, basically, I suppose, doing what books do you know
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allowing to happen what books do best, which is, you know, the
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first thing you want to do when you read a good book or have a
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great experience reading is to turn to someone and say I love
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this and tell me about it.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with you.
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I can think of the times when I finished a book and I thought,
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oh my goodness, I wish I had someone to share my thoughts on
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this book with you know, because it just seeps in and you just
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want to talk about it with someone, which brings me on to
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my next question how do you decide on the curation of the
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store?
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Speaker 2: That's a great question and I think every book
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buyer, every bookseller to buying books, the shop, will
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have a different answer.
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But for me I think there's the kind of what am I thinking about
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when I'm buying a book?
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It's sort of part one to that question.
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And then, secondly, how you?
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How am I doing it?
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You know, who am I talking to?
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So the first bit, I think, is kind of who am I thinking about?
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And in reality I'm thinking about our customer base or
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potential customer base.
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So who are the people that are coming to the shop, which is
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something that's quite hard to do when you're doing a initial
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stock order for the first books that are going to be in your
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shop, because you have an idea of who your customer might be
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and who you hope they might be and who you're going to try and
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get into the shop.
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But you're always going to be surprised.
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You know there's it's always never going to exactly match.
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I think you know matter, you know how on brand your, your
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marketing is, or you know I think it's that's that's really
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that really interesting question is who is your customer?
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And for us that's a combination of you know local people who
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live in the local area, the local community, then reaching
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out further, kind of people that have discovered us either by
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social media or a podcast like this or I've said, or a
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recommendation from a friend, and have come because they like
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the ethos or or maybe the books that we recommended online.
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And then, thirdly, there's also I want to want to do a book bar
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, was welcome everyone and I hope we do that.
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But I also really really wanted to communicate to people who
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didn't regularly visit independent book shops.
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Independent book shops are really really cool and really
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fun and great places to spend time and is your location fairly
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close to central London.
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Yeah, we're in like things we park, which is just north of
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Kings Cross in north London, and yeah.
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So I think that's what I'm thinking about.
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And then I guess there's also always the element of your own
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personal taste, which is always going to come into it.
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I think that's the joy, in some ways part of the joy, of buying
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books for an independent book shop that you have created,
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because there is obviously an element of here's something I
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think is worth you reading, and of course, that's totally
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subjective.
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So there's a balance of what do I think you, as a customer, I
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going to enjoy, and where does that interact with my own
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personal Paste, you know?
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Speaker 1: yeah, and when I look on your social media posts or
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the photographs on your website, you have a fairly diverse
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customer base.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, part of what I'm really proud of is that we
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actually get a lot of young women in their sort of twenties
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and thirties who I'd say that's a massive proportion anyway of
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our customer base.
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But we get a lot of young women who come into the space and
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feel happy to have a glass of wine or a coffee and read on
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their own in a way that they might not in a bar or a pub or,
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you know, maybe they might in a cafe, but you know, to come in
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on an evening on your own In a big city is actually not that,
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not something that lots of young women feel comfortable doing.
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Speaker 1: And that says so much right there.
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The fact that women feel comfortable coming alone and
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just sitting there with a glass of wine or a cup of coffee
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reading is wonderful, and that's something you've created.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, definitely.
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And like I think, I think that's reflected in our ethos,
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what we read, you know, I think, because you know it is a big
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city and we, we certainly do have, and we have a large
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section of writing from the queer community, you know.
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So I think, yeah, we do have a, we do have a good kind of range
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of customers.
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Yeah, good range of customers.
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Speaker 1: There's a photo of Rob Delaney and his bicycle
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helmet on your website and his holding copies of his memoir a
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heart that works.
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Do you get many London authors popping in to sign books and say
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hi?
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Speaker 2: yeah, I think, because we're in London, we are
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very spoiled to have, you know, so many authors living locally,
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and when I mean locally, I mean in the neighborhood Explicitly,
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but also, you know, coming from all different parts of London To
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sign their books, to drop in proofs and then, obviously, when
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things come out, so, yeah, we have people just popping in.
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We also do loads of events as well.
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So we have recently, just popping in, had, literally in
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the last few weeks or, you know, month or so, had David Nichols,
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dolly Oldton, just for Christmas, we had Zadie Smith in
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, you know, all their all coming in explicitly sign their books
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and it all kind of started with.
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Probably sure, there were lots of signings before this, but a
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really memorable early visitor was honey a Angahara, who came
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to sign to paradise when it came out.
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And we organize it's the only time we've ever done this, but
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we organized a kind of formal book signing which, like it's,
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you know, I was a bit nervous about because it's, you know,
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are people going to turn up etc.
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You know, normally if someone comes in, we just kind of they
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come in and we've known in advance.
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We don't advertise it.
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Do you know what I mean?
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Whereas this.
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We kind of actually put tickets up and people you know
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basically bought a copy of the book and that was their ticket
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to come and get a signature, you know, and Hania was sitting in
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the back of the shop and it was great fun and it sort of paved
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the way for a whole series of then in conversation events.
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We've always had a big in person program of events in the shop,
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but we have also started in the last year or so to do larger
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events externally in bigger venues.
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So we've kind of had, yeah, offensive people like Curtis
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Sittenfeld and Rolly Alston again, and Caleb Zena Nelson and
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, yeah, a whole range of authors that we admire, that we want to
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have conversations with.
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And then we also have a book club, which is virtual so, which
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we do like this, and that's great because it means that we
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can reach people further afield so they don't need to be on the
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doorstep.
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So we have people all around the UK join us for that.
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But also we can talk to authors that might not be able to come
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to the UK or not might not be on tour at the time.
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So we've had people like and patch it and we've even had in
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the shop actually as well to sign the supermodel, emily
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Ratikowski, you know.
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So a real range of people and that's a really big part of what
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we do, not just because it's great to get authors to come
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into the shop and sign, but because the events side of
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things brings people together as well.
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And that's, you know, I think, when you know lots of bookshops
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put on events and like, for us certainly that's a big part of
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the ethos of saying come and chat and you know, join us, you
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know, let's, let's, let's speak about books and and have that
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social interaction with one another and meet other readers.
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Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely.
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Let's talk about something you did a few years ago when you
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were a barefoot bookseller at the Echo resort of Soniva Fushi
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on Kanfanadu Island in the Maldives, and I hope I've said
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that correctly.
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Speaker 2: Yes, so that's what it is funny to talk about.
00:15:04
It feels like a dream in like the sense that it's one of those
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kind of what people would describe as a dream job, but
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also in the sense that it's so removed from my reality now, in
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kind of you know, North London, Northeast London, so in some
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ways it feels like it never happened.
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You know, and when I get asked about it I go yeah, that was my
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life for six months.
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Speaker 1: It sounds great.
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Why don't you explain to our listeners what a barefoot
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bookseller is?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was one of those working publishing and
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I just on a whim applied for this job.
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That sounded again like just kind of the most unusual job in
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the world and it probably is one of the most usual jobs you
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could have.
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It is kind of put together by a luxury resort called Soniva,
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who have two resorts in the Maldives Soniva Fushi and Soniva
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Jani and a British company who I guess they put together
00:16:03
libraries for hotels and called Ultimate Library and sort of
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bespoke libraries for people's homes and things as well, and
00:16:12
they started together this initiative called the Barefoot
00:16:15
Bookseller, which I fortunately got to go to live for six months
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in the Maldives on one of the resort islands that belongs to
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Soniva.
00:16:24
So you're kind of living on this on this island, working for
00:16:29
this resort, and you essentially run a bookshop where
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you are selling books to the guests who are on holiday there.
00:16:36
It's really interesting because you meet all sorts of different
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people from all around the world.
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You get this kind of extraordinary experience of
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living on a really remote island in the middle of the Indian
00:16:46
Ocean and you're selling books while you're doing it.
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Speaker 1: So yeah, it was quite extraordinary and let's not
00:16:52
forget thousands of people apply for that job, and you were the
00:16:55
one who landed it.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was one of those things where, when I
00:16:58
got the job offer, I thought I better take it then, sort of
00:17:02
thing, because you think, oh, this is, this is a once in a
00:17:04
lifetime thing and I think you apply for it.
00:17:06
Just you know, with absolutely no assumption you'll ever get
00:17:09
that job, because so many people apply for it.
00:17:11
Oh yeah, one of those extraordinary experiences, and
00:17:15
it's funny because they now, I think they now have it where you
00:17:17
do it for a year and you might I'm not, I can't remember, I'm
00:17:21
not sure of the exact setup now, but it's definitely slightly
00:17:24
different to when I did it, and my experience was cut slightly
00:17:27
short by the pandemic which was sort of going on around us.
00:17:30
I came back in April, I think of 2020.
00:17:34
And I arrived in November.
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So I did, I think, yeah, just shy of the six months I was
00:17:39
supposed to be doing.
00:17:40
Speaker 1: I was reading the Barefoot Bookseller blog and in
00:17:44
one piece you wrote quote Living so remotely, without access to
00:17:48
online shopping, bougie trends and some of the creature
00:17:51
comforts I usually take for granted, has led me to reassess
00:17:55
what I value and taught me that community really is the most
00:17:59
important thing.
00:18:00
End quote have you managed to keep the sense of peace since
00:18:04
returning to London?
00:18:04
If so, how, and has the bookbar given you that sense of
00:18:09
community once again?
00:18:12
Speaker 2: Well, it's so interesting.
00:18:13
Firstly, thank you for going back and reading my own blogs.
00:18:15
I had no idea anyone read them at the time, let alone was still
00:18:19
reading them.
00:18:19
Oh, I enjoyed them, they were great.
00:18:21
I was actually really fun because when, when you said that
00:18:27
you'd sort of read some of the blogs, it actually took me back
00:18:29
and I went and read some of them and it was like, oh well, I'm
00:18:32
blast, you know, down memory lane sort of thing.
00:18:34
So yeah, that was really nice and I'm very touched that you
00:18:37
read them.
00:18:38
It's funny thinking about that experience because I'd gone to
00:18:43
the Maldives, I think, you know, from a city where life was just
00:18:47
nonstop and I had a job where I was working really hard and you
00:18:51
know, working, yeah, just just work was kind of the centre of
00:18:54
my life.
00:18:55
And obviously I moved to the Maldives for a job and you're
00:18:59
because you're living in the resort.
00:19:01
You are there for the job, but the lifestyle is obviously so
00:19:04
different and you know it was a job where I was really like my
00:19:08
lifestyle changed a lot and I was, you know, I had a lot more
00:19:11
time, and time became a totally different thing for me then.
00:19:15
So it's really funny thinking about whether I've managed to
00:19:19
keep that sense of peace, because I think I don't think I
00:19:22
have, but I did learn, learn lessons and, I guess, just apply
00:19:28
.
00:19:28
You know it's very easy to have a sense of peace when there
00:19:31
aren't that many high stakes in your life, if that makes sense.
00:19:36
You know, and I guess running a business as amazing as running
00:19:40
book bar is and has been it's an extraordinary challenge and you
00:19:46
know it really challenges your ability to remain calm and to
00:19:53
feel relaxed, as I did then.
00:19:55
So I think I've had to employ the strategies for just in a
00:19:58
much more pressurised situation.
00:20:02
But in terms of community, I think that's something I've
00:20:04
always really cared about.
00:20:05
I think it's why I love independent shops and
00:20:07
independent retail, whether that's bookshops or you know
00:20:10
where we buy our food or coffee or whatever it is, where we get
00:20:16
art from, you know whatever form of art that is.
00:20:19
I've always always felt a connection with people.
00:20:23
I've always loved people and I think that independent
00:20:27
businesses really build those connections and that community.
00:20:32
So I think probably the reason I started book bar, the answer
00:20:36
is probably that I all the jobs I've done have probably been
00:20:38
because I really like people and I love community and I guess I
00:20:42
don't know where that comes from .
00:20:43
You know, I'm sure a therapist would have lots to say, but you
00:20:49
know?
00:20:49
Speaker 1: Oh, I think that's wonderful and I also think it's
00:20:51
a really important part of being a bookseller.
00:20:54
However, the flip side of that is that sometimes we all get
00:20:57
overwhelmed.
00:20:58
Whenever I get in a situation where I'm feeling overwhelmed or
00:21:01
a little overcrowded, I think of a place like your island, or
00:21:07
for me it's in the mountains, beside a river or a lake, hiking
00:21:11
, and I just think about that for a moment, pause and reflect,
00:21:17
and I doubt anyone knows I'm doing it, but it gives me that
00:21:21
moment to collect myself.
00:21:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pausing, isn't it?
00:21:28
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly yeah.
00:21:29
Speaker 2: Pausing and pausing and perspective, I think, are
00:21:32
the two things that help, sort of just taking yourself out of
00:21:36
the immediate, you know, the immediate worry or the immediate
00:21:39
problem.
00:21:40
I think the best bit of advice I was given was by some friends
00:21:43
who'd set up restaurants.
00:21:44
They have several now and they sort of said to me never look at
00:21:48
it on a minute by minute or day by day.
00:21:51
Always take the sort of bird's eye perspective, because if you
00:21:57
find yourself thinking about the minute, you need to be on top
00:22:01
of the minute, but if you find yourself worrying about the
00:22:03
minute, you will never have the right perspective, you know, and
00:22:09
you'll make silly decisions.
00:22:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fantastic advice and it's a good
00:22:14
reminder to all of us.
00:22:15
I am intrigued about your decision to open Book Bar in
00:22:19
June 2020.
00:22:20
Was this planned before we knew about the pandemic or after?
00:22:24
And how was your first year of business?
00:22:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the timeline is really that I, having had
00:22:31
all this you know, having wanted to do it as long as I could
00:22:35
remember and thinking when I was younger they wouldn't all
00:22:37
thinking when I was working and publishing it wouldn't happen
00:22:40
until I, you know, was much older and probably had more
00:22:43
roots in place and a bit more security when I was in the
00:22:49
Maldives.
00:22:49
It was a really good rediscovery that I loved
00:22:51
bookselling, you know, I knew that I did, but a combination
00:22:54
that I love bookselling and coming back and going.
00:22:58
Well, you know, I came back into the pandemic in the UK,
00:23:02
went into lockdown and was sort of thinking, well, now, what you
00:23:07
know, and had low, you know, sort of brainstorming options
00:23:11
and, you know, speaking to trusted people, and it was like,
00:23:16
well, at the time I sort of naively thought, well, while the
00:23:20
world's locked down, it's quite good planning time.
00:23:22
So that's when it all started, in kind of June-ish, I think, of
00:23:26
2020, thinking that, oh well, by the time I'm ready to go,
00:23:31
we'll all be sort of out of lockdown.
00:23:34
It will be, you know, I can sort of go in beat first and hit
00:23:39
the ground running, as it were.
00:23:40
And what actually happened was obviously that I mean there were
00:23:44
lockdown lifts and we were ready to go, probably in reality
00:23:48
by January February 2021, is when the bookshop was kind of
00:23:53
ready to go physically and we were in the middle of lockdown
00:23:56
then.
00:23:56
So I started doing kind of Click and Collect and we started
00:24:00
the book club so that we could communicate.
00:24:02
We are going to be doing all these events, we are going to be
00:24:04
a social space, and then we opened our doors on the 12th of
00:24:09
April 2021, which was when the UK's final lockdown lifted.
00:24:14
So I think, to be honest, it was less of a decision and more of
00:24:19
a naive assumption that we all had no idea what was going on,
00:24:25
did we?
00:24:25
Or how it would all play out.
00:24:26
So yeah, in hindsight, I think if I'd known, who knows, would I
00:24:31
have ever started it?
00:24:31
Because if I'd known that, it would have happened that way.
00:24:35
But I also have no other alternative universe in which
00:24:40
Nothing to measure it against Exactly.
00:24:43
And sometimes I think that part of the initial success was the
00:24:48
fact that people were so excited by a shop that was so
00:24:51
explicitly saying we're celebrating the social side of
00:24:54
reading, and also that books had there's been so many articles
00:24:59
and things about how people were reading more during lockdown,
00:25:02
weren't they?
00:25:02
And books had kind of a big boom, and then, I guess, finally
00:25:08
, people had kind of discovered the local high streets in a way
00:25:11
they might not have done before and been incentivised by what
00:25:15
had happened to support those businesses.
00:25:17
And so I think in some ways, although it wasn't a decision I
00:25:20
took knowingly, it's been, I think, a good thing how it all
00:25:27
played out at the time.
00:25:28
Speaker 1: It's great that you have the bar and the cafe.
00:25:32
Most bookshops have something else other than books, because
00:25:36
books don't really have a markup .
00:25:38
The price on the book is the price that you pay.
00:25:41
Okay, let's talk about books.
00:25:43
What's your favourite book to hand sell and what are you
00:25:46
currently reading?
00:25:47
Speaker 2: Oh, gosh so hard.
00:25:49
This is so silly because it's the thing I do every day, but
00:25:53
it's like the pressure of having to choose one.
00:25:55
Can I give you two favourite books to hand sell?
00:25:58
Yes, of course.
00:25:59
So I think the book that originally I would have said and
00:26:04
I still believe is certainly one of my favourite books to
00:26:07
hand sell is Pachinko by Minjin Lee, which is a book I was lucky
00:26:12
enough to work on when it came out in the UK and publishing,
00:26:15
and I think as a result, I have like a personal relationship
00:26:19
with the book if that makes sense and its publication, or a
00:26:24
slightly different personal relationship.
00:26:25
It's a book that I just remember reading and thinking.
00:26:31
Books are magical For me.
00:26:33
I mean, I love all sorts of books, but for me, I think, the
00:26:36
books I love most are often the books where you are with a group
00:26:43
of characters or a single character and you just get to
00:26:47
spend time with them and be in their world, and I think
00:26:50
Pachinko is one of those books that does that extraordinarily
00:26:54
well.
00:26:54
For those that haven't read it, it's about a Korean family who,
00:26:59
in the early 20th century, moved from Korea to Japan and
00:27:04
you then follow the next sort of eight decades, I think, and
00:27:11
four generations of this family's life against kind of
00:27:16
enormous historical events.
00:27:17
But what you are experiencing as a reader is their intimate
00:27:23
lives.
00:27:23
It's epic in the sense of the backdrop to the story, but it's
00:27:29
incredibly intimate in terms of the way that you experience
00:27:31
these characters and how you witness their lives.
00:27:35
Yeah, so I just love that in a book.
00:27:37
And the second book I would say is the one I love to hand-sell.
00:27:44
My team, this is Will Love, because they are so predictable
00:27:49
from me, but it's Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zeven,
00:27:55
which shares the thing that I think Pachinko has of just
00:27:58
loving these characters and wanting to spend time with them.
00:28:02
And I just think what's extraordinary about Tomorrow and
00:28:05
Tomorrow is the way that it is a book about these two people
00:28:13
and their relationship with one another as friends.
00:28:16
And again for the plot, for those that haven't read it
00:28:19
although I'm sure so many of you all listen, as Will it's about
00:28:24
two friends, sam and Sadie, who meet in hospital in the 80s, I
00:28:28
think, as children, and they play video games to pass the
00:28:32
time but also to escape the reason.
00:28:34
They're both in hospital and they don't see each other for
00:28:38
about a decade and then they bump into one another at college
00:28:41
and they start designing video games together and the company
00:28:46
that they create becomes an extraordinary success and that's
00:28:50
not a spoiler, because it's referenced enough in the early
00:28:54
parts of the book.
00:28:55
It's so brilliant at thinking about creative collaboration and
00:29:01
I think I really resonated with it because it's about the way
00:29:05
that you can have something in your head and then see it before
00:29:09
you in real life, which I think any creative can resonate with,
00:29:14
or anyone that's started a business or anyone that's put
00:29:17
something out into the world the fear that you feel doing that,
00:29:21
but the incredible reward that you experience by doing it.
00:29:25
I think that that's why it's resonated as well with so many
00:29:27
readers is that it's about video games, and you learn so much
00:29:31
about this incredible minds and creative people that it takes to
00:29:37
create video games.
00:29:39
You begin to see video gaming as this artistic form.
00:29:43
I think it's appeal to readers because it's really about
00:29:46
passion, what it's like to put everything into something you
00:29:52
love, and I think, no matter who you are, whether that's reading
00:29:56
or painting or sport or whatever it might be we all have
00:30:01
the thing that we are most passionate about and you
00:30:05
experience that on the page.
00:30:07
It's a wonderful, wonderful book, and I could talk about it
00:30:09
for hours, as you can probably tell.
00:30:11
Speaker 1: But that's why your bookshop is so successful.
00:30:14
You love what you're doing, you're passionate about reading
00:30:17
and you love community.
00:30:19
Yeah, what are you currently reading?
00:30:22
Speaker 2: I'm currently rereading Come and Get it by
00:30:25
Kylie Reid, because I'm interviewing her for an event
00:30:28
next week.
00:30:29
Speaker 1: I haven't read that yet.
00:30:30
Did you enjoy it?
00:30:31
Speaker 2: Oh, it's great, yes, I mean, she's so emotionally
00:30:37
intelligent in the way that she just cuts into how people think
00:30:41
and speak and all the she makes you cringe and it's very
00:30:44
intentional, I think.
00:30:45
Yeah, I'm a big fan of her writing, I think she's really
00:30:49
smart and I'm excited to speak with her next week.
00:30:51
So, yes, and then something I've just finished, clear, by
00:30:58
Paris Davis.
00:30:59
So she's a.
00:31:01
I think it's her third novel and it's coming out in March in
00:31:05
the UK, and it's about some historical events that I knew
00:31:11
about but didn't know loads about, called the Highland
00:31:14
Clearances, which happened in Scotland in the 1800s, and
00:31:18
basically it was where wealthy landlords realised that the
00:31:22
tenants, the farmers on their farms, they realised that they
00:31:28
could make more money by sheet farming or farming by
00:31:31
alternative means, and so they evicted hundreds and hundreds of
00:31:36
farmers from their land.
00:31:38
And it's about a priest who has left the church that's run by
00:31:44
the state and he's setting up, along with some other ministers,
00:31:48
a free church in Scotland and, as a result, they're not getting
00:31:52
funded by the state.
00:31:53
So he's very poor and he takes on some work from one of these
00:31:57
landlords.
00:31:58
He's asked to go and evict a man living on a very remote
00:32:03
island off of the Scottish coast and he's the only inhabitant of
00:32:06
this tiny island, so that the landlord can sheet farm on it
00:32:10
instead.
00:32:11
And so he goes and he's away for a month.
00:32:15
But in the first few days he has an accident and he wakes up
00:32:21
in the cottage of the man that he's supposed to be evicting and
00:32:25
neither can speak the other language.
00:32:27
But they build this relationship and it's just beautiful and
00:32:33
it's incredible on language and obviously the politics of that,
00:32:36
but it's so subtly, so definitely done.
00:32:39
It reminded me of reading an author like Claire Keegan.
00:32:44
He's one of my favourite writers in the way that language
00:32:48
, the language of the book, the way that every word counts but
00:32:53
it never feels heavy-handed, you know, and just the beautiful
00:32:57
writing.
00:32:58
And yeah, it's what was extraordinary, a really
00:33:01
extraordinary book.
00:33:01
That's called Clear by Tarris Davis.
00:33:04
Speaker 1: That sounds absolutely beautiful and I am
00:33:06
also a Claire Keegan fan.
00:33:08
Chrissy, it's been great having you on the show.
00:33:10
Thank you for everything you do to keep community together.
00:33:13
I wish you continued success with Book Bar and everything
00:33:17
else you do.
00:33:18
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you so much .
00:33:19
Thank you for having me and, yeah, I love listening to you
00:33:23
know booksellers speaking about being booksellers, so it's been
00:33:27
an honour to be on here, so thank you.
00:33:30
Speaker 1: You've been listening to my conversation with Chrissy
00:33:33
Ryan from Book Bar at 166 Blackstock Road, london.
00:33:38
To find out more about the Bookshop podcast, go to
00:33:42
thebookshoppodcastcom and make sure to subscribe and leave a
00:33:46
review wherever you listen to the show.
00:33:48
You can also follow me at Mandy Jackson Beverly on X, instagram
00:33:54
and Facebook and on YouTube at the Bookshop podcast.
00:33:57
If you have a favourite indie bookshop that you'd like to
00:34:01
suggest we have on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you via
00:34:04
the contact form at thebookshoppodcastcom.
00:34:07
The Bookshop podcast is written and produced by me, mandy
00:34:12
Jackson Beverly, theme music provided by Brian Beverly,
00:34:15
executive assistant to Mandy, adrienne Otterhan, and graphic
00:34:19
design by Frances Verralla.
00:34:21
Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.
Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson Beverly.
00:00:13
Welcome to the Bookshop podcast .
00:00:16
Each week, I present interviews with independent bookshop
00:00:19
owners from around the globe, authors, publishing
00:00:22
professionals and specialists in subjects dear to my heart the
00:00:27
environment and social justice.
00:00:29
To help the show reach more people, please share it with
00:00:32
friends and family and on social media, and remember to
00:00:36
subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this
00:00:39
podcast.
00:00:40
You're listening to episode 244 .
00:00:46
Bookbar is a bookshop, wine bar, events and social space
00:00:51
centered around celebrating the social side of reading.
00:00:54
At Bookbar, they believe there's nothing better than
00:00:57
sharing a good book, the joy of unraveling the characters and
00:01:01
plot points with a friend over a glass of wine or coffee.
00:01:04
Bookbar brings people together through events and creates
00:01:08
community around books, with music readings, wine tastings
00:01:12
and yes, even books and bangers a DJ night in the bookshop.
00:01:16
Bookbar's prescription program, shelf Medicaid, is designed for
00:01:21
anyone who has the desire to pick up a book.
00:01:24
Their book club welcomes readers from around the UK to
00:01:27
read a book and attend a virtual author event each month.
00:01:31
Hi, chrissy, and welcome to the show.
00:01:33
It's great to have you here.
00:01:35
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me, Mandy.
00:01:37
I'm really grateful to be here.
00:01:38
Speaker 1: I saw your bookshop online and, of course, I went
00:01:41
down rabbit holes doing some research about you and your
00:01:45
adventures and I thought I need to have Chrissy on the show to
00:01:48
talk about what she's done.
00:01:50
So let's begin with learning about you and what drew you to
00:01:53
Open Bookbar.
00:01:55
Speaker 2: It's tricky to know where to start, without going
00:01:58
into my full life story, because I think when something like
00:02:01
this happens, it's so often been something that has been
00:02:04
germinating for a long time, and I'm sure that's true of lots of
00:02:09
the booksellers that you interview, and for me I would
00:02:12
say that the romantic answer is that I'd always wanted to have
00:02:16
my own bookshop.
00:02:16
I think there's sort of evidence in my diaries of me sort of
00:02:21
doing my A-levels which I guess I like my SATs, or when I was 18
00:02:26
and going oh, I just wish that I could just not do my exams and
00:02:30
open a bookshop instead.
00:02:31
And I remember finding those little excerpts over lockdown
00:02:37
and while I was setting up Bookbar and thinking, well, this
00:02:40
is funny, this is kind of all come full circle.
00:02:42
And I have a friend of my mums who would say, you know, who
00:02:47
still says that the first time she met me when I was about 12
00:02:49
or 13, she asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up and
00:02:52
I said something like, oh, I just would love to have my own
00:02:56
bookshop and cafe.
00:02:58
And that was obviously before I discovered alcohol and
00:03:01
introduced the booze as well.
00:03:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it worked and that's great.
00:03:07
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:03:08
Speaker 1: And the background is to do with books too.
00:03:09
You were in publishing right.
00:03:12
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, exactly.
00:03:13
So I had always been a big reader and book lover but sort
00:03:17
of thought I'd go on to do something, not in the industry.
00:03:21
As I moved to London to do a masters and got a job in a
00:03:23
bookshop and loved it and sort of I guess like found the thing
00:03:28
I was best at you know, it was books and it was people and I
00:03:32
thought, wow, like I want to do this for a living, and ended up
00:03:37
working in publishing in sales, both in UK sales and then export
00:03:42
sales, so selling books to bookshops and organisations
00:03:45
around the world, basically, which was great fun.
00:03:47
And while I was there, the instinct or the thought that I
00:03:52
would love to have my own bookshop was kind of always
00:03:56
there and I would make you know just little, just any ideas that
00:03:59
came to mind.
00:03:59
I would just keep in a little notebook, and bookbar was always
00:04:03
the kind of working title that I didn't really like at the time
00:04:06
.
00:04:06
But when I came to make the decision for the name, it was
00:04:10
the one thing that explained what we did best and I thought
00:04:12
that needed to be.
00:04:13
That felt really important, that people knew exactly what we
00:04:15
did from the offset, you know.
00:04:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a great name and it's nice and
00:04:19
short.
00:04:20
About a month ago I interviewed Valerie Kolo.
00:04:23
She is the owner of Blue Willow Bookshop and she said she
00:04:26
wished she'd had a shorter name because when you're in a hurry
00:04:29
and you pick up the phone and you've got to say good morning,
00:04:31
blue Willow Bookshop.
00:04:32
But it can be a real mouthful.
00:04:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the sort of thing that you don't realise
00:04:36
when you're setting it up.
00:04:38
That is important, you know, and just having something pithy
00:04:42
and clear about really important .
00:04:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's succinct, that's for sure.
00:04:47
Now, what caught my attention in your website's about section
00:04:51
was the phrase quote.
00:04:52
It's never about how many books you've read that year or
00:04:55
whether you've read the latest prize winners at Bookbar Books
00:04:59
are Social.
00:05:00
Do you see this idea as a reflection of the success of
00:05:04
Bookbar?
00:05:05
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah.
00:05:06
I think that the whole ethos of Bookbar is to celebrate what
00:05:11
makes independent bookshops really important, which is that
00:05:16
all bookshops are social spaces, whether customers realise it or
00:05:20
not, because they are spaces where you're interacting with
00:05:24
other people's ideas in book form.
00:05:25
But also, you know, they are spaces because you talk about
00:05:29
books.
00:05:29
You end up having conversations , and I really wanted to
00:05:33
communicate that to people who didn't necessarily realise that.
00:05:37
So I think that that's been something that's really
00:05:40
important to everything we do I talk about.
00:05:44
Bookbar's mission is to celebrate the social side of
00:05:47
reading, and everything we do is about bringing people together
00:05:51
through books, and that's why we serve the coffee and the wine.
00:05:54
It's to encourage people to linger and interact with one
00:05:58
another in a what is quite a small space.
00:06:00
You know, book bar, the physical shop is not enormous.
00:06:04
So it's about getting people to stay in the space for a while
00:06:09
and engage with the books, engage with us and, as you know,
00:06:13
the booksellers, and also, if they want, to engage with each
00:06:17
other, and that's been a massive part of our success, I think,
00:06:21
is that, yeah, we really, really encourage people to recommend
00:06:27
books to one another in the space.
00:06:28
We have a whole wall downstairs With chalk pens where people can
00:06:32
just put on their own recommendations and we have sort
00:06:35
of prompts you know I'm their favorite cozy read or whatever
00:06:39
I'm but people just add their own and interact with each other
00:06:42
that way and that encourages all is a reflection of one or
00:06:47
the other, the way that people are interacting in the shop.
00:06:49
And yeah, by sitting down having a glass of wine, we get people
00:06:52
who sit and maybe they ask us for a recommendation.
00:06:56
We start pulling out some books .
00:06:57
We do a bit of kind of personal shopping in a way, which you
00:07:00
know is is what all booksellers are doing with their hand
00:07:02
selling.
00:07:02
We encourage them to sit down with a, with a coffee or a glass
00:07:05
of wine, while we kind of build a stack for them, and that
00:07:10
means that people often get talking to one another because
00:07:13
they've never hear us recommending something, or
00:07:16
someone says I love this to us, and then, next thing, you know
00:07:18
the person sitting next to me to read this.
00:07:21
You know, basically, I suppose, doing what books do you know
00:07:26
allowing to happen what books do best, which is, you know, the
00:07:29
first thing you want to do when you read a good book or have a
00:07:33
great experience reading is to turn to someone and say I love
00:07:38
this and tell me about it.
00:07:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with you.
00:07:42
I can think of the times when I finished a book and I thought,
00:07:45
oh my goodness, I wish I had someone to share my thoughts on
00:07:49
this book with you know, because it just seeps in and you just
00:07:52
want to talk about it with someone, which brings me on to
00:07:55
my next question how do you decide on the curation of the
00:07:58
store?
00:07:59
Speaker 2: That's a great question and I think every book
00:08:03
buyer, every bookseller to buying books, the shop, will
00:08:07
have a different answer.
00:08:09
But for me I think there's the kind of what am I thinking about
00:08:13
when I'm buying a book?
00:08:14
It's sort of part one to that question.
00:08:16
And then, secondly, how you?
00:08:18
How am I doing it?
00:08:19
You know, who am I talking to?
00:08:20
So the first bit, I think, is kind of who am I thinking about?
00:08:25
And in reality I'm thinking about our customer base or
00:08:28
potential customer base.
00:08:30
So who are the people that are coming to the shop, which is
00:08:33
something that's quite hard to do when you're doing a initial
00:08:35
stock order for the first books that are going to be in your
00:08:38
shop, because you have an idea of who your customer might be
00:08:43
and who you hope they might be and who you're going to try and
00:08:46
get into the shop.
00:08:47
But you're always going to be surprised.
00:08:48
You know there's it's always never going to exactly match.
00:08:51
I think you know matter, you know how on brand your, your
00:08:55
marketing is, or you know I think it's that's that's really
00:08:59
that really interesting question is who is your customer?
00:09:01
And for us that's a combination of you know local people who
00:09:05
live in the local area, the local community, then reaching
00:09:09
out further, kind of people that have discovered us either by
00:09:13
social media or a podcast like this or I've said, or a
00:09:16
recommendation from a friend, and have come because they like
00:09:20
the ethos or or maybe the books that we recommended online.
00:09:22
And then, thirdly, there's also I want to want to do a book bar
00:09:28
, was welcome everyone and I hope we do that.
00:09:29
But I also really really wanted to communicate to people who
00:09:37
didn't regularly visit independent book shops.
00:09:39
Independent book shops are really really cool and really
00:09:42
fun and great places to spend time and is your location fairly
00:09:45
close to central London.
00:09:49
Yeah, we're in like things we park, which is just north of
00:09:52
Kings Cross in north London, and yeah.
00:09:53
So I think that's what I'm thinking about.
00:09:54
And then I guess there's also always the element of your own
00:10:00
personal taste, which is always going to come into it.
00:10:03
I think that's the joy, in some ways part of the joy, of buying
00:10:05
books for an independent book shop that you have created,
00:10:07
because there is obviously an element of here's something I
00:10:13
think is worth you reading, and of course, that's totally
00:10:15
subjective.
00:10:15
So there's a balance of what do I think you, as a customer, I
00:10:18
going to enjoy, and where does that interact with my own
00:10:21
personal Paste, you know?
00:10:26
Speaker 1: yeah, and when I look on your social media posts or
00:10:28
the photographs on your website, you have a fairly diverse
00:10:30
customer base.
00:10:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, part of what I'm really proud of is that we
00:10:35
actually get a lot of young women in their sort of twenties
00:10:36
and thirties who I'd say that's a massive proportion anyway of
00:10:44
our customer base.
00:10:45
But we get a lot of young women who come into the space and
00:10:49
feel happy to have a glass of wine or a coffee and read on
00:10:52
their own in a way that they might not in a bar or a pub or,
00:10:55
you know, maybe they might in a cafe, but you know, to come in
00:10:56
on an evening on your own In a big city is actually not that,
00:11:03
not something that lots of young women feel comfortable doing.
00:11:08
Speaker 1: And that says so much right there.
00:11:09
The fact that women feel comfortable coming alone and
00:11:12
just sitting there with a glass of wine or a cup of coffee
00:11:14
reading is wonderful, and that's something you've created.
00:11:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, definitely.
00:11:20
And like I think, I think that's reflected in our ethos,
00:11:23
what we read, you know, I think, because you know it is a big
00:11:27
city and we, we certainly do have, and we have a large
00:11:31
section of writing from the queer community, you know.
00:11:35
So I think, yeah, we do have a, we do have a good kind of range
00:11:37
of customers.
00:11:37
Yeah, good range of customers.
00:11:41
Speaker 1: There's a photo of Rob Delaney and his bicycle
00:11:44
helmet on your website and his holding copies of his memoir a
00:11:46
heart that works.
00:11:47
Do you get many London authors popping in to sign books and say
00:11:53
hi?
00:11:54
Speaker 2: yeah, I think, because we're in London, we are
00:11:57
very spoiled to have, you know, so many authors living locally,
00:12:00
and when I mean locally, I mean in the neighborhood Explicitly,
00:12:02
but also, you know, coming from all different parts of London To
00:12:09
sign their books, to drop in proofs and then, obviously, when
00:12:12
things come out, so, yeah, we have people just popping in.
00:12:13
We also do loads of events as well.
00:12:14
So we have recently, just popping in, had, literally in
00:12:21
the last few weeks or, you know, month or so, had David Nichols,
00:12:23
dolly Oldton, just for Christmas, we had Zadie Smith in
00:12:30
, you know, all their all coming in explicitly sign their books
00:12:34
and it all kind of started with.
00:12:35
Probably sure, there were lots of signings before this, but a
00:12:38
really memorable early visitor was honey a Angahara, who came
00:12:44
to sign to paradise when it came out.
00:12:46
And we organize it's the only time we've ever done this, but
00:12:49
we organized a kind of formal book signing which, like it's,
00:12:54
you know, I was a bit nervous about because it's, you know,
00:12:56
are people going to turn up etc.
00:12:58
You know, normally if someone comes in, we just kind of they
00:13:00
come in and we've known in advance.
00:13:02
We don't advertise it.
00:13:04
Do you know what I mean?
00:13:04
Whereas this.
00:13:06
We kind of actually put tickets up and people you know
00:13:09
basically bought a copy of the book and that was their ticket
00:13:11
to come and get a signature, you know, and Hania was sitting in
00:13:14
the back of the shop and it was great fun and it sort of paved
00:13:17
the way for a whole series of then in conversation events.
00:13:21
We've always had a big in person program of events in the shop,
00:13:26
but we have also started in the last year or so to do larger
00:13:30
events externally in bigger venues.
00:13:32
So we've kind of had, yeah, offensive people like Curtis
00:13:36
Sittenfeld and Rolly Alston again, and Caleb Zena Nelson and
00:13:41
, yeah, a whole range of authors that we admire, that we want to
00:13:46
have conversations with.
00:13:47
And then we also have a book club, which is virtual so, which
00:13:51
we do like this, and that's great because it means that we
00:13:53
can reach people further afield so they don't need to be on the
00:13:56
doorstep.
00:13:56
So we have people all around the UK join us for that.
00:14:00
But also we can talk to authors that might not be able to come
00:14:04
to the UK or not might not be on tour at the time.
00:14:07
So we've had people like and patch it and we've even had in
00:14:11
the shop actually as well to sign the supermodel, emily
00:14:13
Ratikowski, you know.
00:14:14
So a real range of people and that's a really big part of what
00:14:18
we do, not just because it's great to get authors to come
00:14:22
into the shop and sign, but because the events side of
00:14:24
things brings people together as well.
00:14:26
And that's, you know, I think, when you know lots of bookshops
00:14:30
put on events and like, for us certainly that's a big part of
00:14:34
the ethos of saying come and chat and you know, join us, you
00:14:39
know, let's, let's, let's speak about books and and have that
00:14:43
social interaction with one another and meet other readers.
00:14:46
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely.
00:14:47
Let's talk about something you did a few years ago when you
00:14:51
were a barefoot bookseller at the Echo resort of Soniva Fushi
00:14:55
on Kanfanadu Island in the Maldives, and I hope I've said
00:14:58
that correctly.
00:14:59
Speaker 2: Yes, so that's what it is funny to talk about.
00:15:04
It feels like a dream in like the sense that it's one of those
00:15:08
kind of what people would describe as a dream job, but
00:15:11
also in the sense that it's so removed from my reality now, in
00:15:14
kind of you know, North London, Northeast London, so in some
00:15:19
ways it feels like it never happened.
00:15:21
You know, and when I get asked about it I go yeah, that was my
00:15:24
life for six months.
00:15:27
Speaker 1: It sounds great.
00:15:28
Why don't you explain to our listeners what a barefoot
00:15:31
bookseller is?
00:15:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was one of those working publishing and
00:15:35
I just on a whim applied for this job.
00:15:38
That sounded again like just kind of the most unusual job in
00:15:43
the world and it probably is one of the most usual jobs you
00:15:45
could have.
00:15:46
It is kind of put together by a luxury resort called Soniva,
00:15:54
who have two resorts in the Maldives Soniva Fushi and Soniva
00:15:56
Jani and a British company who I guess they put together
00:16:03
libraries for hotels and called Ultimate Library and sort of
00:16:08
bespoke libraries for people's homes and things as well, and
00:16:12
they started together this initiative called the Barefoot
00:16:15
Bookseller, which I fortunately got to go to live for six months
00:16:20
in the Maldives on one of the resort islands that belongs to
00:16:24
Soniva.
00:16:24
So you're kind of living on this on this island, working for
00:16:29
this resort, and you essentially run a bookshop where
00:16:33
you are selling books to the guests who are on holiday there.
00:16:36
It's really interesting because you meet all sorts of different
00:16:38
people from all around the world.
00:16:40
You get this kind of extraordinary experience of
00:16:43
living on a really remote island in the middle of the Indian
00:16:46
Ocean and you're selling books while you're doing it.
00:16:49
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was quite extraordinary and let's not
00:16:52
forget thousands of people apply for that job, and you were the
00:16:55
one who landed it.
00:16:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was one of those things where, when I
00:16:58
got the job offer, I thought I better take it then, sort of
00:17:02
thing, because you think, oh, this is, this is a once in a
00:17:04
lifetime thing and I think you apply for it.
00:17:06
Just you know, with absolutely no assumption you'll ever get
00:17:09
that job, because so many people apply for it.
00:17:11
Oh yeah, one of those extraordinary experiences, and
00:17:15
it's funny because they now, I think they now have it where you
00:17:17
do it for a year and you might I'm not, I can't remember, I'm
00:17:21
not sure of the exact setup now, but it's definitely slightly
00:17:24
different to when I did it, and my experience was cut slightly
00:17:27
short by the pandemic which was sort of going on around us.
00:17:30
I came back in April, I think of 2020.
00:17:34
And I arrived in November.
00:17:36
So I did, I think, yeah, just shy of the six months I was
00:17:39
supposed to be doing.
00:17:40
Speaker 1: I was reading the Barefoot Bookseller blog and in
00:17:44
one piece you wrote quote Living so remotely, without access to
00:17:48
online shopping, bougie trends and some of the creature
00:17:51
comforts I usually take for granted, has led me to reassess
00:17:55
what I value and taught me that community really is the most
00:17:59
important thing.
00:18:00
End quote have you managed to keep the sense of peace since
00:18:04
returning to London?
00:18:04
If so, how, and has the bookbar given you that sense of
00:18:09
community once again?
00:18:12
Speaker 2: Well, it's so interesting.
00:18:13
Firstly, thank you for going back and reading my own blogs.
00:18:15
I had no idea anyone read them at the time, let alone was still
00:18:19
reading them.
00:18:19
Oh, I enjoyed them, they were great.
00:18:21
I was actually really fun because when, when you said that
00:18:27
you'd sort of read some of the blogs, it actually took me back
00:18:29
and I went and read some of them and it was like, oh well, I'm
00:18:32
blast, you know, down memory lane sort of thing.
00:18:34
So yeah, that was really nice and I'm very touched that you
00:18:37
read them.
00:18:38
It's funny thinking about that experience because I'd gone to
00:18:43
the Maldives, I think, you know, from a city where life was just
00:18:47
nonstop and I had a job where I was working really hard and you
00:18:51
know, working, yeah, just just work was kind of the centre of
00:18:54
my life.
00:18:55
And obviously I moved to the Maldives for a job and you're
00:18:59
because you're living in the resort.
00:19:01
You are there for the job, but the lifestyle is obviously so
00:19:04
different and you know it was a job where I was really like my
00:19:08
lifestyle changed a lot and I was, you know, I had a lot more
00:19:11
time, and time became a totally different thing for me then.
00:19:15
So it's really funny thinking about whether I've managed to
00:19:19
keep that sense of peace, because I think I don't think I
00:19:22
have, but I did learn, learn lessons and, I guess, just apply
00:19:28
.
00:19:28
You know it's very easy to have a sense of peace when there
00:19:31
aren't that many high stakes in your life, if that makes sense.
00:19:36
You know, and I guess running a business as amazing as running
00:19:40
book bar is and has been it's an extraordinary challenge and you
00:19:46
know it really challenges your ability to remain calm and to
00:19:53
feel relaxed, as I did then.
00:19:55
So I think I've had to employ the strategies for just in a
00:19:58
much more pressurised situation.
00:20:02
But in terms of community, I think that's something I've
00:20:04
always really cared about.
00:20:05
I think it's why I love independent shops and
00:20:07
independent retail, whether that's bookshops or you know
00:20:10
where we buy our food or coffee or whatever it is, where we get
00:20:16
art from, you know whatever form of art that is.
00:20:19
I've always always felt a connection with people.
00:20:23
I've always loved people and I think that independent
00:20:27
businesses really build those connections and that community.
00:20:32
So I think probably the reason I started book bar, the answer
00:20:36
is probably that I all the jobs I've done have probably been
00:20:38
because I really like people and I love community and I guess I
00:20:42
don't know where that comes from .
00:20:43
You know, I'm sure a therapist would have lots to say, but you
00:20:49
know?
00:20:49
Speaker 1: Oh, I think that's wonderful and I also think it's
00:20:51
a really important part of being a bookseller.
00:20:54
However, the flip side of that is that sometimes we all get
00:20:57
overwhelmed.
00:20:58
Whenever I get in a situation where I'm feeling overwhelmed or
00:21:01
a little overcrowded, I think of a place like your island, or
00:21:07
for me it's in the mountains, beside a river or a lake, hiking
00:21:11
, and I just think about that for a moment, pause and reflect,
00:21:17
and I doubt anyone knows I'm doing it, but it gives me that
00:21:21
moment to collect myself.
00:21:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pausing, isn't it?
00:21:28
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly yeah.
00:21:29
Speaker 2: Pausing and pausing and perspective, I think, are
00:21:32
the two things that help, sort of just taking yourself out of
00:21:36
the immediate, you know, the immediate worry or the immediate
00:21:39
problem.
00:21:40
I think the best bit of advice I was given was by some friends
00:21:43
who'd set up restaurants.
00:21:44
They have several now and they sort of said to me never look at
00:21:48
it on a minute by minute or day by day.
00:21:51
Always take the sort of bird's eye perspective, because if you
00:21:57
find yourself thinking about the minute, you need to be on top
00:22:01
of the minute, but if you find yourself worrying about the
00:22:03
minute, you will never have the right perspective, you know, and
00:22:09
you'll make silly decisions.
00:22:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fantastic advice and it's a good
00:22:14
reminder to all of us.
00:22:15
I am intrigued about your decision to open Book Bar in
00:22:19
June 2020.
00:22:20
Was this planned before we knew about the pandemic or after?
00:22:24
And how was your first year of business?
00:22:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the timeline is really that I, having had
00:22:31
all this you know, having wanted to do it as long as I could
00:22:35
remember and thinking when I was younger they wouldn't all
00:22:37
thinking when I was working and publishing it wouldn't happen
00:22:40
until I, you know, was much older and probably had more
00:22:43
roots in place and a bit more security when I was in the
00:22:49
Maldives.
00:22:49
It was a really good rediscovery that I loved
00:22:51
bookselling, you know, I knew that I did, but a combination
00:22:54
that I love bookselling and coming back and going.
00:22:58
Well, you know, I came back into the pandemic in the UK,
00:23:02
went into lockdown and was sort of thinking, well, now, what you
00:23:07
know, and had low, you know, sort of brainstorming options
00:23:11
and, you know, speaking to trusted people, and it was like,
00:23:16
well, at the time I sort of naively thought, well, while the
00:23:20
world's locked down, it's quite good planning time.
00:23:22
So that's when it all started, in kind of June-ish, I think, of
00:23:26
2020, thinking that, oh well, by the time I'm ready to go,
00:23:31
we'll all be sort of out of lockdown.
00:23:34
It will be, you know, I can sort of go in beat first and hit
00:23:39
the ground running, as it were.
00:23:40
And what actually happened was obviously that I mean there were
00:23:44
lockdown lifts and we were ready to go, probably in reality
00:23:48
by January February 2021, is when the bookshop was kind of
00:23:53
ready to go physically and we were in the middle of lockdown
00:23:56
then.
00:23:56
So I started doing kind of Click and Collect and we started
00:24:00
the book club so that we could communicate.
00:24:02
We are going to be doing all these events, we are going to be
00:24:04
a social space, and then we opened our doors on the 12th of
00:24:09
April 2021, which was when the UK's final lockdown lifted.
00:24:14
So I think, to be honest, it was less of a decision and more of
00:24:19
a naive assumption that we all had no idea what was going on,
00:24:25
did we?
00:24:25
Or how it would all play out.
00:24:26
So yeah, in hindsight, I think if I'd known, who knows, would I
00:24:31
have ever started it?
00:24:31
Because if I'd known that, it would have happened that way.
00:24:35
But I also have no other alternative universe in which
00:24:40
Nothing to measure it against Exactly.
00:24:43
And sometimes I think that part of the initial success was the
00:24:48
fact that people were so excited by a shop that was so
00:24:51
explicitly saying we're celebrating the social side of
00:24:54
reading, and also that books had there's been so many articles
00:24:59
and things about how people were reading more during lockdown,
00:25:02
weren't they?
00:25:02
And books had kind of a big boom, and then, I guess, finally
00:25:08
, people had kind of discovered the local high streets in a way
00:25:11
they might not have done before and been incentivised by what
00:25:15
had happened to support those businesses.
00:25:17
And so I think in some ways, although it wasn't a decision I
00:25:20
took knowingly, it's been, I think, a good thing how it all
00:25:27
played out at the time.
00:25:28
Speaker 1: It's great that you have the bar and the cafe.
00:25:32
Most bookshops have something else other than books, because
00:25:36
books don't really have a markup .
00:25:38
The price on the book is the price that you pay.
00:25:41
Okay, let's talk about books.
00:25:43
What's your favourite book to hand sell and what are you
00:25:46
currently reading?
00:25:47
Speaker 2: Oh, gosh so hard.
00:25:49
This is so silly because it's the thing I do every day, but
00:25:53
it's like the pressure of having to choose one.
00:25:55
Can I give you two favourite books to hand sell?
00:25:58
Yes, of course.
00:25:59
So I think the book that originally I would have said and
00:26:04
I still believe is certainly one of my favourite books to
00:26:07
hand sell is Pachinko by Minjin Lee, which is a book I was lucky
00:26:12
enough to work on when it came out in the UK and publishing,
00:26:15
and I think as a result, I have like a personal relationship
00:26:19
with the book if that makes sense and its publication, or a
00:26:24
slightly different personal relationship.
00:26:25
It's a book that I just remember reading and thinking.
00:26:31
Books are magical For me.
00:26:33
I mean, I love all sorts of books, but for me, I think, the
00:26:36
books I love most are often the books where you are with a group
00:26:43
of characters or a single character and you just get to
00:26:47
spend time with them and be in their world, and I think
00:26:50
Pachinko is one of those books that does that extraordinarily
00:26:54
well.
00:26:54
For those that haven't read it, it's about a Korean family who,
00:26:59
in the early 20th century, moved from Korea to Japan and
00:27:04
you then follow the next sort of eight decades, I think, and
00:27:11
four generations of this family's life against kind of
00:27:16
enormous historical events.
00:27:17
But what you are experiencing as a reader is their intimate
00:27:23
lives.
00:27:23
It's epic in the sense of the backdrop to the story, but it's
00:27:29
incredibly intimate in terms of the way that you experience
00:27:31
these characters and how you witness their lives.
00:27:35
Yeah, so I just love that in a book.
00:27:37
And the second book I would say is the one I love to hand-sell.
00:27:44
My team, this is Will Love, because they are so predictable
00:27:49
from me, but it's Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zeven,
00:27:55
which shares the thing that I think Pachinko has of just
00:27:58
loving these characters and wanting to spend time with them.
00:28:02
And I just think what's extraordinary about Tomorrow and
00:28:05
Tomorrow is the way that it is a book about these two people
00:28:13
and their relationship with one another as friends.
00:28:16
And again for the plot, for those that haven't read it
00:28:19
although I'm sure so many of you all listen, as Will it's about
00:28:24
two friends, sam and Sadie, who meet in hospital in the 80s, I
00:28:28
think, as children, and they play video games to pass the
00:28:32
time but also to escape the reason.
00:28:34
They're both in hospital and they don't see each other for
00:28:38
about a decade and then they bump into one another at college
00:28:41
and they start designing video games together and the company
00:28:46
that they create becomes an extraordinary success and that's
00:28:50
not a spoiler, because it's referenced enough in the early
00:28:54
parts of the book.
00:28:55
It's so brilliant at thinking about creative collaboration and
00:29:01
I think I really resonated with it because it's about the way
00:29:05
that you can have something in your head and then see it before
00:29:09
you in real life, which I think any creative can resonate with,
00:29:14
or anyone that's started a business or anyone that's put
00:29:17
something out into the world the fear that you feel doing that,
00:29:21
but the incredible reward that you experience by doing it.
00:29:25
I think that that's why it's resonated as well with so many
00:29:27
readers is that it's about video games, and you learn so much
00:29:31
about this incredible minds and creative people that it takes to
00:29:37
create video games.
00:29:39
You begin to see video gaming as this artistic form.
00:29:43
I think it's appeal to readers because it's really about
00:29:46
passion, what it's like to put everything into something you
00:29:52
love, and I think, no matter who you are, whether that's reading
00:29:56
or painting or sport or whatever it might be we all have
00:30:01
the thing that we are most passionate about and you
00:30:05
experience that on the page.
00:30:07
It's a wonderful, wonderful book, and I could talk about it
00:30:09
for hours, as you can probably tell.
00:30:11
Speaker 1: But that's why your bookshop is so successful.
00:30:14
You love what you're doing, you're passionate about reading
00:30:17
and you love community.
00:30:19
Yeah, what are you currently reading?
00:30:22
Speaker 2: I'm currently rereading Come and Get it by
00:30:25
Kylie Reid, because I'm interviewing her for an event
00:30:28
next week.
00:30:29
Speaker 1: I haven't read that yet.
00:30:30
Did you enjoy it?
00:30:31
Speaker 2: Oh, it's great, yes, I mean, she's so emotionally
00:30:37
intelligent in the way that she just cuts into how people think
00:30:41
and speak and all the she makes you cringe and it's very
00:30:44
intentional, I think.
00:30:45
Yeah, I'm a big fan of her writing, I think she's really
00:30:49
smart and I'm excited to speak with her next week.
00:30:51
So, yes, and then something I've just finished, clear, by
00:30:58
Paris Davis.
00:30:59
So she's a.
00:31:01
I think it's her third novel and it's coming out in March in
00:31:05
the UK, and it's about some historical events that I knew
00:31:11
about but didn't know loads about, called the Highland
00:31:14
Clearances, which happened in Scotland in the 1800s, and
00:31:18
basically it was where wealthy landlords realised that the
00:31:22
tenants, the farmers on their farms, they realised that they
00:31:28
could make more money by sheet farming or farming by
00:31:31
alternative means, and so they evicted hundreds and hundreds of
00:31:36
farmers from their land.
00:31:38
And it's about a priest who has left the church that's run by
00:31:44
the state and he's setting up, along with some other ministers,
00:31:48
a free church in Scotland and, as a result, they're not getting
00:31:52
funded by the state.
00:31:53
So he's very poor and he takes on some work from one of these
00:31:57
landlords.
00:31:58
He's asked to go and evict a man living on a very remote
00:32:03
island off of the Scottish coast and he's the only inhabitant of
00:32:06
this tiny island, so that the landlord can sheet farm on it
00:32:10
instead.
00:32:11
And so he goes and he's away for a month.
00:32:15
But in the first few days he has an accident and he wakes up
00:32:21
in the cottage of the man that he's supposed to be evicting and
00:32:25
neither can speak the other language.
00:32:27
But they build this relationship and it's just beautiful and
00:32:33
it's incredible on language and obviously the politics of that,
00:32:36
but it's so subtly, so definitely done.
00:32:39
It reminded me of reading an author like Claire Keegan.
00:32:44
He's one of my favourite writers in the way that language
00:32:48
, the language of the book, the way that every word counts but
00:32:53
it never feels heavy-handed, you know, and just the beautiful
00:32:57
writing.
00:32:58
And yeah, it's what was extraordinary, a really
00:33:01
extraordinary book.
00:33:01
That's called Clear by Tarris Davis.
00:33:04
Speaker 1: That sounds absolutely beautiful and I am
00:33:06
also a Claire Keegan fan.
00:33:08
Chrissy, it's been great having you on the show.
00:33:10
Thank you for everything you do to keep community together.
00:33:13
I wish you continued success with Book Bar and everything
00:33:17
else you do.
00:33:18
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you so much .
00:33:19
Thank you for having me and, yeah, I love listening to you
00:33:23
know booksellers speaking about being booksellers, so it's been
00:33:27
an honour to be on here, so thank you.
00:33:30
Speaker 1: You've been listening to my conversation with Chrissy
00:33:33
Ryan from Book Bar at 166 Blackstock Road, london.
00:33:38
To find out more about the Bookshop podcast, go to
00:33:42
thebookshoppodcastcom and make sure to subscribe and leave a
00:33:46
review wherever you listen to the show.
00:33:48
You can also follow me at Mandy Jackson Beverly on X, instagram
00:33:54
and Facebook and on YouTube at the Bookshop podcast.
00:33:57
If you have a favourite indie bookshop that you'd like to
00:34:01
suggest we have on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you via
00:34:04
the contact form at thebookshoppodcastcom.
00:34:07
The Bookshop podcast is written and produced by me, mandy
00:34:12
Jackson Beverly, theme music provided by Brian Beverly,
00:34:15
executive assistant to Mandy, adrienne Otterhan, and graphic
00:34:19
design by Frances Verralla.
00:34:21
Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.