Now it’s remarkably silly when writing a blog like this to get into the foolish habit of entitling every other piece Book Loving Story of the Day, Bookshop of the Month etc. when you have neither the intention nor the time to follow through with all of the regular posts that would suggest, but it’s done, we are where we are, and there’s no going back and fiddling and crossing out now if I am going to get this piece written in the ten minutes I have allotted myself. So, here we have Bookshop of this month (and almost certainly the next month, and the month after that, and on and on up into the middle of December or whenever I next remember or find another bookshop almost as remarkable as this one).
I am currently putting together a list of books I will be ordering, and you will be reading next year. Exciting times. At least, I think so. And so does Stephen at Page45 in Nottingham, England, which is all the more remarkable given the fact that he has never met any of you. The simple fact of it is that Stephen, much like myself, is a book lover, a book evangelist no less, and a fanatical card-carrying loon for those wondrous creations, comics, and graphic novels, which combine the expressivity of two of the finest forms of human expression, writing and drawing (or drawing and writing, depending on how you look at it).
Well, I am getting rather carried away myself. But the fact remains that the bookshop, Page45 (and website, and Twitter account, and who even knows what else), that Stephen runs with the other wonderful people of Page45, is one of those beautiful things, a place full of and run by enthusiasts, people who are there and do what they do because they love it and want other people to love it even half as much as they do. That is why they get up in the morning.
A town, village, city, country benefits from having such places. Knock down a McDonalds or twelve and put one of these in its place and you watch what happens to the people within its catchment area, that is, the surprisingly large area around the shop which is affected by it. If there is not a system for working that out in Sim City or those other city simulation games you play, then send it back in disgust, and pick up a comic or a graphic novel – preferably one suggested by Stephen and colleagues – because these are the things that matter to a city and we should keep them going and support them as well as we can.
At 19:00 on Friday night, I wrote to Page45 asking for recommendations for books to buy for you guys. I had written to a few other places and people and got a few responses, each of which was more or less helpful, but I knew Page45 to be staffed by passionate people who talk comics all day and continue to engage on the subject in their free time.
I got a response almost straight away directing me to their recommendations page. I filled in the questions for myself, and then gave details about you guys, saying how old you were and that most of you are not native speakers of English etc.
I got a response the very next day. It gave recommendations both for myself (I had given a few details about myself too), and for you guys. It is worth quoting the recommendations for you in full:
“Right, now then, obviously we need to avoid a lot of slang and indeed phonetics* which sadly rules Jamie Smart books like FISH HEAD STEVE out. Shame: so good! As a substitute for stooopid, though, TEENYTINYSAURS is relatively free from slang and phonetics.
Moving on, the 3 ZITA books are actually very European in style. I think they would go down very well. MULP does as well. Also, who can be too young for Oscar Wilde’s THE HAPPY PRINCE (you may disagree.)
Oooh, AMULET. Fab! A real Haiyo Miyazaki sensibility.
BONE is an obvious one, but our Jodie who has read it more recently does warn of LOT of American contractions.
Instead for action / adventure I recommend THE UNSINKABLE WALKER BEAN and for sheer genius, the GLISTER pocketbook series by Andi Watson. Great for new vocabulary!
Lastly, on the MOOMIN front FYI the landscape books at £6-99 and £7-50 contain colour episodes from the £14-99 black and white hardcovers.
Hope all that helps!
Stephen @pagefortyfive”
I don’t know about you but I can feel the passion coming off the page. This guys wants you to love these books.
So do I.
So, Amazon is not going to build a warehouse in Brno. We’ll survive without. As soon as you are old enough to have money in your pocket, find a bookshop near you that has people who talk the way Stephen does about books, and you’ll do all right. While you are at it, click through to Page45 and see what I am talking about, because that dear readers, is my bookshop of the month!
* Stephen is here talking about phonetical spelling, which is how writers sometimes represent different accents and other unusual ways of speaking. Do not confuse it with phonics which is the way teachers usually teach you how to spell etc.
The book pusher of Lesser Town 