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Post by cromagnonman on Jun 18, 2020 14:57:00 GMT
One of my favourite bookshops - Any Amount of Books on Charing Cross Road - has announced that it is reopening on Monday 29 June. Hurrah Hurrah! Only let's not be too premature with the celebrations as it comes with some serious strings attached. To wit: - Entry dependant upon wearing a facemask
- Hand sanitiser to be used before handling stock
- Strict limit of customers at any one time
- No cash payments
- Social distancing in operation
- Visits limited to 25 min duration
- Queue for access
- OBEY THE STAFF!!!!!
Website goes on to say: "You can buy online, but its a lot more fun to do so in the shop."
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Post by dem bones on Jun 18, 2020 16:23:49 GMT
Thanks for letting us know, Crom. 'No cash payments' rules me out. Was in there back in February which, stating the obvious, feels like a previous life now. They do an attractive business card these days.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jun 18, 2020 19:03:10 GMT
What is the point of going to a store if you cannot rub up against other people? Who is with me? Hello?
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Post by cromagnonman on Jun 18, 2020 21:16:52 GMT
I really want one of those cards Kev. Its a hobby of mine to collect book dealer cards. I started some years ago when it struck me what little physical record there was of places like Dark They Were and Golden-Eyed, The Edge of Forever, Popular Book Centre and similar long gone emporiums of wonder. And the rise of Am*z*n and Abe seemed certain to scrawl the writing on the wall for all second-hand bookshops. A fear borne out by the fact that many of the cards I have are for vendors that no longer exist. It has become ever harder in recent years to find dealers that still produce them. And I fear it is soon to become harder still. Because I've just learned that Francis Edwards/Quinto Basement on Charing Cross Road has closed permanently. Going there for the monthly stock changeover was one of life's joys for me and this is damned hard and bitter news to bear.
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Post by helrunar on Jun 19, 2020 4:16:32 GMT
Long ago, weren't there several bookshops or bookstalls in Charing Cross? Or am I confusing it with another old London address? I heard a couple of weeks ago that the outdoor book truck market in front of the Brattle Bookstore in Boston was re-opening, for limited hours, but I haven't gotten over there yet. Talking of Abe, a bookseller in Australia (from whom I recently ordered a reasonably priced copy of one of Simon Raven's more obscure volumes of memoir, Is Anyone there? said the traveller) advised me to skip Abe and check this site. She sent me an email in which she advised: A good search engine to use is www.addall.com which searches several different websites including ABE. You may wish to order through another search engine - www.booksandcollectibles.com.au – which also has a secure ordering system and our books are listed at 10% less than ABE. Both Books and Collectibles inventory and ABE inventory can be simultaneously searched through www.addall.com. For those who are trying to get specific titles or works by specific authors... cheers, Steve
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Post by andydecker on Jun 19, 2020 9:00:34 GMT
Every day from 10.30 to 9.30. Wow. How do they manage this? In Germany shops are closed on Sunday by law, with some exceptions, bookstores normally close between 6.30 to 8 p.m.
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Post by Swampirella on Jun 19, 2020 10:51:22 GMT
Long ago, weren't there several bookshops or bookstalls in Charing Cross? Or am I confusing it with another old London address? I heard a couple of weeks ago that the outdoor book truck market in front of the Brattle Bookstore in Boston was re-opening, for limited hours, but I haven't gotten over there yet. Talking of Abe, a bookseller in Australia (from whom I recently ordered a reasonably priced copy of one of Simon Raven's more obscure volumes of memoir, Is Anyone there? said the traveller) advised me to skip Abe and check this site. She sent me an email in which she advised: A good search engine to use is www.addall.com which searches several different websites including ABE. You may wish to order through another search engine - www.booksandcollectibles.com.au – which also has a secure ordering system and our books are listed at 10% less than ABE. Both Books and Collectibles inventory and ABE inventory can be simultaneously searched through www.addall.com. For those who are trying to get specific titles or works by specific authors... cheers, Steve Thanks, Steve, these search engines look very useful, although shipping from Australia to N. America is usually prohibitive.
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Post by cromagnonman on Jun 19, 2020 12:12:28 GMT
Long ago, weren't there several bookshops or bookstalls in Charing Cross? Or am I confusing it with another old London address? Cheers, Steve No, you're not wrong. There was a time when Charing Cross Road was to books what the King's Road was to fab fashion and Denmark Street still is to music but its hard to make the case that that is true any longer. The place has been in decline for decades. All sorts of factors have played a part in this. Yes, on-line competition partly to blame of course (which took out the big Borders that was once there, and the Wordsworth remainder outlet [anyone else remember that?]) but really the landlords of the properties far more culpable. Twenty years ago or so they made a concerted effort to drive the booksellers out, wanting to encourage a younger footfall which they reasoned weren't remotely interested in prehistoric fuddy duddy stuff like printed books. One side of the street was horrendously redeveloped which is when Murder One got forced out [and the comic shop next door whose name now escapes me but I'm sure Dem will remember]. Foyles somehow remains but Waterstones decamped to Trafalgar Square years ago. And the off-shoot of Cecil Court still harbours the top end of the antiquarian food chain but you wont find many bargains there. Which just left three or four of the old traditional dealers. But with Francis Edwards now gone that's one less and frankly I no longer have any confidence now that the rest will long remain. Would love to have known it in its post war heyday when the place was crammed with bookshops including the iconic Marks & Co of course at No 84 [its a restaurant now]. As George Harrison so sagely put it: "All Things Must Pass", which seems to be the prevailing theme for the times.
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Post by helrunar on Jun 19, 2020 13:40:33 GMT
Hi Swampi,
I haven't had time yet to check those search engines. If they're for customers down in Oz, I agree that the shipping fees pretty much wipe out any other savings. I bought the Raven book from Jenny's shop because all the other copies available on ABE were at ridiculous prices. I don't get it--not only is Raven obscure, but his books would be on the new Index Expurgatorium being compiled by acolytes of the new "cancel culture" movement--which, if carried to its logical extreme, will basically wipe out all human culture prior to circa 2000 CE... rather like Qin Shihuang burning all books except for farming manuals and the I Ching when he took control of China back in 200 BCE.
I am much happier visiting bookshops and having fun stumbling over things in the course of the quest, but I don't drive and now with no end in sight of the pandemic, my visits to actual stores are an ever more infrequent treat.
Happy Summer Solstice! Live streaming of sunrise at Stonehenge (4:43 am UK time, I have read, which makes it 11:43 pm tonight here in the Northeast US). This makes me absurdly happy. Maybe I'll put the music from the 1957 classic Night of the Demon on repeat... either that or Holst's Neptune (which would be lovely music to play during sunrise). Or Cyril Scott's Aubade....
dithering along, Hel
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Post by helrunar on Jun 19, 2020 13:45:27 GMT
Thanks, Richard, for that vividly etched slice of history.
Locally, Cafe Pamplona, a cozy little cellar with a small area of street seating that was open in the warmer months, is about to close. It was founded by a refugee who had fled Pamplona in Spain and settled in Cambridge in the late 1950s. Harvard sent all the students home last March and it's unlikely many of them will be returning in the autumn, so the owner has made the decision to close up. The whole area of Harvard Square has been like a ghost town on the couple of occasions when I've been over there in the past months. I hope the Harvard Bookstore can stay open. It's actually an independently operated shop with a marvelous basement area... some nice shelves devoted to sci-fi, fantasy and horror down there.
cheers, Steve
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Post by cromagnonman on Jun 19, 2020 14:03:38 GMT
Thanks, Richard, for that vividly etched slice of history. Locally, Cafe Pamplona, a cozy little cellar with a small area of street seating that was open in the warmer months, is about to close. It was founded by a refugee who had fled Pamplona in Spain and settled in Cambridge in the late 1950s. Harvard sent all the students home last March and it's unlikely many of them will be returning in the autumn, so the owner has made the decision to close up. The whole area of Harvard Square has been like a ghost town on the couple of occasions when I've been over there in the past months. I hope the Harvard Bookstore can stay open. It's actually an independently operated shop with a marvelous basement area... some nice shelves devoted to sci-fi, fantasy and horror down there. cheers, Steve Sad story Steve. I fear that when we are finally allowed to crawl blinking from our bunkers many of us are no longer going to recognise the world we inhabit. This is what Any Amount of Books used to look like back in the day [courtesy of one of the shop's giveaway postcards]. And you can imagine much of the rest of Charing Cross Road at the time was lined with vendors of this sort.
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Post by helrunar on Jun 19, 2020 14:37:58 GMT
Wonderful photo, Richard! What an extraordinarily tidy little shop. Imagine the heavenly smell of divine old books wafting up to the nostrils as one entered. The odor of paradise.
cheers, Steve
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Post by dem bones on Jun 19, 2020 17:25:52 GMT
No, you're not wrong. There was a time when Charing Cross Road was to books what the King's Road was to fab fashion and Denmark Street still is to music but its hard to make the case that that is true any longer. The place has been in decline for decades. All sorts of factors have played a part in this. Yes, on-line competition partly to blame of course (which took out the big Borders that was once there, and the Wordsworth remainder outlet [anyone else remember that?]) but really the landlords of the properties far more culpable. Twenty years ago or so they made a concerted effort to drive the booksellers out, wanting to encourage a younger footfall which they reasoned weren't remotely interested in prehistoric fuddy duddy stuff like printed books. One side of the street was horrendously redeveloped which is when Murder One got forced out [and the comic shop next door whose name now escapes me but I'm sure Dem will remember]. Foyles somehow remains but Waterstones decamped to Trafalgar Square years ago. And the off-shoot of Cecil Court still harbours the top end of the antiquarian food chain but you wont find many bargains there. Which just left three or four of the old traditional dealers. But with Francis Edwards now gone that's one less and frankly I no longer have any confidence now that the rest will long remain. That really is dreadful news about Francis Edwards- Quinto's. I think the comic shop was The Fantasy Inn? The way I remember it, the place burnt down in "mysterious circumstances." The "Wordsworth remainder outlet" was Lovejoy's, a bookshop/ sleaze emporium at 99a, on the corner of old Compton Street, much loved by many a Vault contributor, including this one. Directly opposite in Caxton Street was the late John Gaustad's legendary Sportspages. Andy Richards' ace Cold Tonage books operated out of the basement at Murder One - Chrissie and me had some great times, upstairs & downstairs in there. Can remember a time when even the Virgin Megastore (long gone) on Oxford Street was pretty decent for books. On a happier note, friend Gerry's Comics-Books-Posters-DVDs is still fighting the good fight!
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Post by cromagnonman on Jun 19, 2020 18:07:22 GMT
No, you're not wrong. There was a time when Charing Cross Road was to books what the King's Road was to fab fashion and Denmark Street still is to music but its hard to make the case that that is true any longer. The place has been in decline for decades. All sorts of factors have played a part in this. Yes, on-line competition partly to blame of course (which took out the big Borders that was once there, and the Wordsworth remainder outlet [anyone else remember that?]) but really the landlords of the properties far more culpable. Twenty years ago or so they made a concerted effort to drive the booksellers out, wanting to encourage a younger footfall which they reasoned weren't remotely interested in prehistoric fuddy duddy stuff like printed books. One side of the street was horrendously redeveloped which is when Murder One got forced out [and the comic shop next door whose name now escapes me but I'm sure Dem will remember]. Foyles somehow remains but Waterstones decamped to Trafalgar Square years ago. And the off-shoot of Cecil Court still harbours the top end of the antiquarian food chain but you wont find many bargains there. Which just left three or four of the old traditional dealers. But with Francis Edwards now gone that's one less and frankly I no longer have any confidence now that the rest will long remain. That really is dreadful news about Francis Edwards- Quinto's. I think the comic shop was The Fantasy Inn? The way I remember it, the place burnt down in "mysterious circumstances." The "Wordsworth remainder outlet" was Lovejoy's, a bookshop/ sleaze emporium at 99a, on the corner of old Compton Street, much loved by many a Vault contributor, including this one. Directly opposite in Caxton Street was the late John Gaustad's legendary Sportspages. Andy Richards' ace Cold Tonage books operated out of the basement at Murder One - Chrissie and me had some great times, upstairs & downstairs in there. Can remember a time when even the Virgin Megastore (long gone) on Oxford Street was pretty decent for books. On a happier note, friend Gerry's Comics-Books-Posters-DVDs is still fighting the good fight! No, Fantasy Inn ("6 feet under The Book Inn") was further down the road about where Capital Radio now is. It certainly did disappear under mysterious circumstances. But I've just remembered that the comic shop was called Comic Showcase. It thrived for years up on Monmouth Street and then made the calamitous decision to move to CCR just before the redevelopment started. I remember Lovejoys very well but the Wordsworth was a remainder chain like Bookcase and was on the opposite side of the road up near where the Phoenix Theatre is. Always remember passing on a remaindered copy of John Gardner's Bond pastiche COLD there. Worth about £300 now. Sigh. Remember Sportspages too. And of course nearby The Cinema Store which an old chum of mine delighted in referring to as "The Den of Weasels". Grand times. Don't think we'll be seeing the likes of them again anytime soon.
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Post by humgoo on Jun 19, 2020 18:37:46 GMT
Mark Valentine wrote a few year back that the number of bookshops in Britain had actually increased: "There is a general idea that there are fewer second hand bookshops in Britain than there used to be, and that they are slowly fading away. Until recently, I would have subscribed to this notion too. I tend to remember not only where bookshops are, but where they used to be: and it often seems that there are more absences than presences. However, on the best evidence we have, this impression seems in fact to be quite wrong."
I wonder if the trend will begin to change or has already changed after the recent plague.
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