Something truly incredible has happened in a village near me. A new bookshop has opened. I know – staggering, isn’t it? But I promise you, I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Even been inside. It’s called the Open Road Bookshop, in Stoke by Nayland, close to the Suffolk/Essex border. Pretty little place (both the shop and the village). Sells secondhand books. That’s it – just books. No café, no multimedia community info-hub, no sideline in pottery or bric-a-brac. Admittedly the owner, Dave Charleston, has done things rather well. Plenty of books, covering just about every subject you could think of, and they’re beautifully displayed (cricket ball as a bookend for the cricket books, a pipe doing the same for those on smoking …) But essentially that’s the deal: you go in, see a book you like – a proper, physical book, with pages and everything – give Dave some money and he lets you take it away.
It struck me as I browsed the shelves in there (about the only way books can injure you – cricked neck) that, perversely, secondhand bookshops might have a stronger future than new bookshops.
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