Books, Books, Books

So today's post is all about the lovely bookstores of London. And I do mean lovely. London must have more bookstores per square foot than any other city in the world. Seriously. If you walk up Charing Cross in London you'll pass at least 10 or more bookstores. That includes the big chains like Waterstones, Blackwells, Hatchards and Borders. Yes, there is a Borders in London. In fact there are two that I know of, one on Charing Cross and the other in Islington where the Sephora is. There used to a chain called Books etc, but I think they died apart from the one at Gatwick Airport. Also, WH Smith and John Menzies which are large chains of Newsagents also carry books. You can find one at either airport. A good place to stock up on those UK magazines, crisps, and chocolate before you get on the plane.

My favorite bookstores are Waterstones, Foyles and Murder One. Waterstones is like a more upscale version of Borders. In fact, I think that when Borders opened that lead them Waterstones to add a cafe in their gigantic store on Piccadilly. What's great about UK bookstores is that they are actually well-stocked compared to American bookstores. Read this week's At the Back Fence at All About Romance to read about the sorry state of American bookstores where most of the staff haven't the faintest clue about the books they are carrying.

At Waterstones in Piccadilly, the fiction section is huge. It takes up the entire floor, plus it's divided into romance, fiction, classics, mystery, and science fiction/fantasy plus graphic novels. You can find Georgette Heyer's entire oeuvre at Waterstones. Plus they carry all the Mills & Boon/Harlequin Romances as well as a nice selection of American romances.

Foyle's is hands down the most frustrating bookstore in the world or at least it used to be. They'd made a lot of changes in the store. For one thing, it's cleaner and the books are better organized than they used to be. When I first started going to Foyle's, they used to divide the books not by genre but by publisher. So it wasn't enough to know the title of the book when you came in, you had to know the publisher as well. Then you had to go to two different tills before you could take your book and walk out of the store. One clerk made up the bill slip, and then you went to a cashier to pay for the book. I don't know if that system is still in place but it was tres weird.

Murder One is a bookstore on Charing Cross that carries only mysteries and romance novels. They even carry Romantic Times or RT Book Club. Here you can find pretty much every romance novel that's been published both in the UK and in the US. That means books that have been imported and not published by a UK publisher. Like here in the States, Rachel Gibson is published by Avon but in the UK, she's published by Little Black Dress (Hodder Headline), but other American authors don't have a UK publisher, so you end up paying more than twice the price for their books. What was great about this bookstore, was that I was able to find a couple of Mills & Boon authors that haven't been published in the States yet like Julie Cohen. I found two of her Mills & Boon Modern Romance Extra books (think Temptation), plus her single title.

Because books are so much more expensive than they are here (for example Rupert Everett's autobiography was 15 pounds which is almost 30 dollars here), I tried to limit what I bought. Also I didn't have much room in my suitcase. So I bought 3 of Julie Cohen's books, the Rupert autobio and a book by Fiona Walker. I almost bought Melissa Nathan's last book but I couldn't after I read the dedication. It was the last book she wrote before she died of cancer, and she dedicated it to her little boy who she wouldn't see grow up. I just burst into tears and I had to put the book back.

Speaking of books, I bought the Janet Evanovich book on writing the other day. Almost bought several other new writing books but I managed to contain myself, at least for now.

Thanks for reading!

EKM