Saturday was National Bookshop Day. They seem to have a national day for everything these days. But, in the case of bookshops, I think it is well deserved.
I’m really glad to see bookshops hanging on – holding back the winds of technological change and remorseless move to all things digital. There is something uplifting about a bookshop, for want of a better description it has soul. A feeling that will never be replicated by the convenience of Kindle and online reviews.
At various times in my life, I’ve been fascinated by nearly all sections in bookshops – especially religion and spirituality section – just about everything apart from particle physics and fiction. I don’t like fiction unless it is Lord of the Rings.
Today, I went into my local Blackwells Oxford to find ‘Cracking Economics’ by Tejvan Pettinger. They had eight copies, which is great because when I checked online two days ago, they said they had ten.
Which means they possibly sold two in two days!
I should have bought a copy to honour my local bookshop, but my publisher has already kindly sent me 20 copies in the post, so I don’t really need a 21st copy.
Still, there it was on the shelf next to the Oxford Dictionary of Economics.
The Economics Bible
The other funny thing is that in America, the same book is called “The Economics Bible.” On that cover, they have put my name next to a picture of Karl Marx. So perhaps some readers in America will think that Tejvan Pettinger is a rather grim looking bearded figure from the Nineteenth Century.
