So the book tour I was going to do obvs got covid-cancelled sob and all the lovely talks are replaced by darting into bookshops when they're quiet to sign things.

BUT the positive is that I do actually get to visit bookshops all around the place and fuck me they're lovely. It's the smell. The smell and the tempo. No other act of shopping has the tempo of book shopping.

This is Coles Books in Bicester. Lovely. Gallery bit upstairs selling posters, vinyl, signed editions. https://coles-books.co.uk/ 

Mostly Books in Abingdon is cute as fuck.

The beautiful @wallingfordbook.

Blackwell's in Holborn. I love it when they put a cafe in a bookshop. You get the smell of coffee and books, which is some kind of next level shit.

Daunts on South End Green. Plus: my first sighting of the book in the retail wild, just chilling on a table in a bookshop, like it was the most natural thing on earth.

Daunts in Belsize Park. This was the first non-food shop I walked into after lockdown and it felt like a transcendent religious experience.

The most important section of Waterstones Brighton (except for the bit with my book in it obvs).

I'm aware that this account is turning into straight-up book shop porn. And I am very comfortable with that.

City Books in Hove. Really keen on this place. Ramshackle little shop, with lots of hidden corners to discover, stuffed to the absolute bloody brim with books, and radiating affection for them.

The Steyning Bookshop. Gorgeous little place: really elegantly selected and displayed books, huge children's area. Sara, the owner, lives in the same building.

It's #bookshopday today. There's never been a more important time to support indie bookshops. Try to picture your local area without that shop. It'll be a grimmer, less colourful place: an endless deadening parade of generic coffee shops and fried chicken places.

I love coffee *and* fried chicken, before you start. Sometimes even at the same time. But I would also like other things to be available.

Spent a lot of time in indie bookshops recently. The thing that really strikes you is the sense of character. They're not the same as each other. Each one is imbued with the personality of the people who own and work in them.

And that, in most high streets, is a blessed relief: you are in a place which is different to other places - not just part of the endless wallpapering of Britain into identical retail landscapes.

So here's a list of properly lovely indie bookshops in Britain and Ireland. They all stock my book (buy my fucking book you cunts) but honestly I don't care what you get. Buy any book. Buy several. Just support them.

It'll be a shitter world if we don't keep these places going. And the way things are right now, we really can't afford for it to get any shitter than it is.

Buckinghamshire

@marlowbookshop

Cambridgeshire

@heffersbookshop
@toppingsely

Cumbria

@bookendscarl
@BookendsKeswick
@SReadBooks

Devon

@HarbourBookshop
@winstonesid

Dorset

@gulliversbks
@winstonebooks

East Sussex

@citybooksinhove

Essex

@hartsbooks

Ireland

@Hodges_Figgis
@OMahonysBooks

Lancashire

@PlackittBooth

London

@belgraviab
@blackwellsHH
@dauntbooks
@kewbookshop
@owlbookshop
@sheenbookshop

Manchester

@blackwellsmcr

North Yorkshire

@ImaginedThings

Oxfordshire

@blackwelloxford
@colesbooks
@dauntsummertown
@MostlyReading
@BooksAbingdon
@wallingfordbook
@Jaffeandneale
@jandnstow

Scotland

@blackwelledin
@edinbookshop
@PortyBooks
@toppingsedin
@toppingsstAs

Somerset

@ToppingsBath
@HuntingRavenBks