Features

With so many fans around the world, I felt we should have a features section where we can feature special pieces submitted by you. If you’re interesting in writing a feature on anything literature based, just contact me and let me know your idea and we’ll feature it on site. Whether it’s a little marketplace full of books near you, a themed literary location that you have visited, or a reading experience you’ve had that you’d like to share, a favourite author you’d like to wax lyrical about, we’d love to hear from you.

If you’re interested in reading about other people’s experience with literature around the world then this is the section for you. Pieces are added chronologically with the most recent at the top.

5 Charming Children’s Libraries from Around the World

As times and libraries have changed, children’s libraries have become ever more vibrant and ever more innovative. It never ceases to amaze me just how much effort goes into making a children’s library somewhere warm and welcoming and these examples are some of the best.

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More Stunning Libraries from Around the World

Book and Bed -Tokyo

Book and Bed describes itself as “an accommodation bookshop” with shared bathroom facilities and thirty bedrooms that have ” no comfortable mattresses, fluffy pillows nor lightweight and warm down duvets.” This may not sound the most luxurious of accommodation but it does fit in with the Japanese ethos of functionality.

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13 Public Libraries You’ll Wish You had a Library Card For

Public Libraries are a Godsend, and whether they’re 1970s concrete monstrosities or beautiful grand buildings they are filled with magic, on every single shelf. However, some libraries stand out as especially beautiful and today we are paying homage to those. Here are thirteen public libraries, you’re going to wish you had a library card for.

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So You Want To Start A Book Club

You want to join a Book-club but you’ve searched locally in libraries and book stores, the internet and local papers all to no avail. There’s nothing out there, not a single thing. What to do? Carry on reading in solitary splendour? Well you could but why not start your very own Book-club

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Top 10 Best Selling Authors

We all have our favourite authors, our go to writers that we barely even look at the blurb or the critics’ reviews before adding their latest tome to our already heaving shelves.

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10 Overdue Library Books

I confess I have an overdue library book. From my college library it’s now 26 years overdue, it had been left at my mum’s and forgotten about.Yes I feel guilty, no I won’t return it, yes I’ll make a donation to cover the cost of its replacement.

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Barmy Books We Should All Buy Right Now

I was doing my usual thing of flicking through the internet looking at bookish things when I came across a list of hysterical book titles.

What else could I do but compile one of our very own..

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10 Of The World’s Most Beautiful Bookstores

A Bookstore or shop is beautiful no matter what it looks like as it houses worlds beyond measure, heartbreak and happiness, deaths and births, heroes, heroines, myths and monsters but of course, it’s always nice when it’s pretty to look at too.

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10 Abandoned and Unused Libraries of the World

I love our feature on the The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries; to see our favourite pastime housed and cared for so diligently is delightful. Sadly that’s not the case everywhere and for every beautiful library, there is an abandoned or unused one.

Here are just a few of them.

Warning the following feature contains images of graphic misuse and abandonment of books.

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What is Gothic Literature and why are we still obsessed with it

I recently wrote a post on my ‘Top 5 Gothic Novels of All Time’. Whilst many of you liked the post, some of you disagreed that some of my chosen novels were Gothic. Others simply weren’t sure what the term ‘Gothic’ actually meant. Some of you also found the blog post interesting because you mainly thought of the Gothic as being restricted to nineteenth century literature. Well let me tell you, it is still very much alive and kicking! (read more)

Richard Booth’s Bookshop and the Literary Legacy

An entrepreneur, scholar and iconoclast, Richard Booth was a wonderfully eccentric man. In 1977, Booth declared himself King of Hay-On-Wye and his horse as Prime Minister.

Some people reading this post will undoubtedly think this man to be an idiot. I think he’s a genius.

Wondering what could save the small, rural economy, he opened the town’s first second-hand bookshop in the old fire station, and took “the strongest men of Hay” to America, where libraries were closing fast. They bought and shipped books in containers back to Hay-on-Wye and were responsible for an economic boom. Following Booth’s success, nearly forty independent bookstores opened in the small town, and it now draws in an estimate of 350, 000 visitors a year. Renowned as the first ever “town of books”, Hay was famous enough to take its love of books to the next level. In 1988, the Hay-On-Wye Literary Festival was birthed, and today draws in around 80, 000 visitors over ten days, whilst its sister festival How The Light Gets In draws in an added 35, 000… (read more)

Literary Places: The Globe Theatre

The Globe Theatre, London, is home to the much-loved plays of William Shakespeare. Although not the original Globe Theatre (and not situated on the original site either), the theatre has however been made as close to the old one as possible, even using old methods of construction.

I have long wanted to visit The Globe Theatre and was extremely excited when it became part of our plans on our visit to London... (read more)

A Visit to South Bank Bookstalls, London

Situated along the Southbank, under the Waterloo Bridge, which provides protection from the weather, the Southbank Book Stalls are a unique place to buy second hand books. Set out in several long tables, filled from end to end with books, there are several stalls, owned and run by different people.

With such a large array of books, which aren’t ordered or organised in any particular way, the best way to browse them (in my opinion) is to walk methodically up and down each side of each table…. (read more)

A Trip to Bath: Mr B’s Emporium of Bookish Delights

Having recently learnt about an independent bookshop nearby, called Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights, we knew we had to go. So we set off to Bath in search of the shop. The quiet back streets of Bath make a perfect location for a quiet, peaceful bookshop. It does however make it difficult to find, if you are not familiar with this part of Bath.  (read more)

Literary Places: Fairy Tales and Castell Coch

What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. ~ G. K. Chesteron

I live in Cardiff, South Wales and on the outskirts of the city is what can only be described as a fairy tale castle, Castell Coch. I haven’t been up there myself since I was a child, so I took my own daughter up there last summer for a day out to have a look around and see if it’s how I remembered it. The sun shone and it was fairly glorious, I can highly recommend it.

Castell Coch is one of two castles in the City, the other being the much larger Cardiff Castle situated in the city centre with its Roman keep and we’re very lucky to have them I think!…  (read more)

Literary Adventures in Paris:

As the plane came in to land at Orly I looked out across the city at night, sparkling with a million lights. Then I saw the Eiffel Tower, twinkling high above everything around it. That’s when I got the feeling, I always get it when I travel, and Paris is somewhere you can really run with it. The feeling that reminds me I’m on an adventure, the adventure is my life and, in the words of the wise Doctor Who “We’re all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?”

The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries

We all love a good library and there are some beautiful examples around the world. Like churches for bibliophiles these sacred houses full of books and magic too. Even browsing through the photographs you can almost smell that sweet vanillin scent and the whispering of the pages.

Even the most boring municipal library contains magic inside, but for this selection of libraries the magic is plain to see.

These are selected by me, from around the world and I hope you enjoy browsing some of the world’s most beautiful libraries with me. (read more)

Of Old Books And Nostalgia – A Journey Through College Street

Vellichor-The strange wistfulness of a used bookshop

For me, the word conjures up images of shops selling old books, their pages yellowed with age, their musty smell transporting me to a distant land. Memories left behind like the hint of a perfume, between the pages by the previous owners, and sometimes, a scribble giving away a tiny little secret about them.

In other words, Vellichor reminds me of College Street. The street tucked in one corner of my hometown, Kolkata. College Street is the world’s largest market for second-hand books and is considered to be one of India’s most famous landmarks.

Why? Allow me to take you on a tour around College Street… (read more)