Independent Bookshop Week - Deborah
What have you missed most about the shop? The pleasure of turning up for work on Fridays and seeing new titles that have come in over the past week; helping customers to find just the right book to match their requirements; and, of course, working with colleagues! (I’ve also missed being treated by Ian to a black coffee from Hemingways!)
Have you read any great books during lockdown? I’ve enjoyed ‘The Wild Silence’ by Raynor Winn (author of ‘The Salt Path’) and ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ by Delia Owen. Additionally, it’s been a pleasure to have time to further my knowledge of the countryside around my part of Sussex, referring to a stack of reference titles covering natural and social history, and to my local Ordnance Survey map for plotting walks that begin right outside my own front door.
If you were to live where the last book you read took place, where would you be? At the court of Henry VIII - I’m reading ‘Wolf Hall’ by Hilary Mantel.
Which fictional character would you most like to be? I was impressed by the main character in Olga Tokarczuk’s ‘Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead’, a book set in a remote village in Poland. Janina Duszejko is a quirky woman in her sixties who’s resilient, interesting and passionate about the things she believes in. She is hugely independent and resourceful, being as capable of mending burst water pipes in the freeing winter as she is of appreciating William Blake’s poetry. She’s a survivor!
Which book would you most like to see made into a film? ‘Stay with Me’ by Ayòbámi Adébáyò. This novel is set in the city of Ilesa in south west Nigeria. The plot is centred around the domestic life of a middle class family and gives a fascinating insight into Nigerian society in the 1980s.
Who is your favourite author? I’m very fond of Helen Dunmore. I found her novel ‘The Siege’ - set in Leningrad during during the Second World War - particularly gripping.
What was the last book that made you cry? ‘Still Alice’ by Lisa Genova.