Readers love nothing more than reading about reading, and the bookshop novel is practically a genre of its own by now. There's something irresistible about a story that takes place among the shelves.
This shelf gathers ten of the best: floating bookshops, midnight bookshops, bookshops that mend broken hearts and one that stays open all night for reasons that take some explaining. Two are diaries by real booksellers, which turn out to be every bit as good as the fiction.
Fair warning: most of these will make you want to open a bookshop. Resist, or don't.
Take a book from the shelf
Before you go
Next time you're near an actual bookshop, go in without a list and let one book choose you. Tell the bookseller what you last loved and see what happens. That conversation is the whole point of the trade.
