Time to revisit the The Book Barge. This is the narrowboat bookshop opened by Sarah Henshaw at Barton Marina.
I first noticed and wrote about it in July, in my post Zuleika's Book Boat, and complained about the punny local press headlines when it opened ('Bookstore on a barge is one hull of an idea' and 'Opening a new chapter').
She looked so lovely in the picture in the Express & Star article that I quite had a heart-fluttering moment and forgave her for calling her narrowboat a 'barge' - and even the pun-ishment of her strapline, 'Boatique Bookselling.' (ouch)
And I even forgave her for never cruising her boat anywhere.
Because I live so locally now, I was able to see The Book Barge for real this time. And I was as charmed by my visit a couple of weeks ago as much as I was by the original newspaper articles last summer. She sells second-hand books as well as new, and you'll find many good bargains there. In fact, when I bought what I thought was a new paperback, it turned out to be used, and half the price I expected.
Sarah has a good blog. In fact her entire website, www.thebookbarge.co.uk, is effectively a blog. I commend her book reviews - I wish she'd write more of them. In fact, rather than just a bookshop she should be a blog, and the boat could be just the place where you go to buy the books she writes about.
Fiction is her speciality; her most recent post, last week, declared that when it comes to boating, she's more interested in yarns than travelogues:
I have to confess that, in my head, I sometimes like to forget The Book Barge is on a canal at all. Dismissing the fact that it is currently permanently moored in a tiny Staffordshire village without diesel enough in the tank to venture further afield than the first lock, daydreaming invariably follows the infinitely more sensational lines of a Joseph Conrad plot (interestingly, the boat is also called Joseph).
... I fancy that we’re gunrunning rather than bookselling, and the setting is rather more South China Sea than Burton on Trent suburbia.
Consequently, I tend to find boat-related fiction much more pleasing than real-life travelogues and often steer my buying in this direction. Ill-advisedly, perhaps, as the three books I am about to recommend are still sitting on the shelves awaiting customer interest a good few months after purchase. Hmmph.
I was interested to see how she solved the problem of bookshelves on the walls above the gunwales. It allows her to showcase book covers and doesn't 'crowd in' the narrow space available. Nevertheless, it's hard to escape the 'corridor' feel - I don't know how one can get around that - perhaps a colour-coded scheme.
It's sweet how there's a children's section at the front, so that they can hold special children's bookreading sessions. It must be wonderful to be a fly on the wall watching how a good reader and book can hold children with rapt attention.
Last month The Book Barge organised a booksigning by Martin Howden for his book Blood Rivals, a joint biography of the two big males starts of Twilight: New Moon.
As I'm not a teenage girl I confess the Twilight phenomenon has passed me by. If I had turned up as a fly on the wall to a boatful of pubescent girls it might have raised a few eyebrows.
Wish I'd been there, though - what a photo-op. Incidentally, I think she should have held the book signing at full moon - how appropriate that would have been. I was at Barton Marina for the last full moon, a few weeks ago, and my, how 'boulevardy' it all felt.
I did see Twilight: New Moon a couple of weeks ago. At the end - when Edward bared his 'emo' and delivered the last line of the film - the whole cinema resounded with a communal sigh and the tangible scent of oestrogen. You could have bottled it.
I still think of him as Cedric Diggory, though. You know, the one from Harry Potter.
Correction on the web address,
www.thebookbarge.co.uk
Regards
DaveWinter
Posted by: Dave Winter | Monday, 07 December 2009 at 07:47 PM