A fear of bookshops - advice sought! by Joan Haig

Bookshops, everyone here will agree, are magical spaces. They are colourful but calming; they are safe spaces but you can get lost in them. They would swallow up hours and fortunes if you let them. Readers and writers all around the world love a good bookshop.

I always loved, and still love, a good bookshop. I’m so lucky to have a list of active independent ones (selling new and second-hand books) within reach. Most are a stone’s throw from excellent cake and coffee houses, rounding out the experience (and my tummy).

So why is it that I am developing a steadily increasing phobia of the bookshop?

It began in 2019 ahead of my debut novel coming out in early 2020. I was meeting the bubblesome and brilliant Emily Ilett at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and we arranged to meet in the children’s section of the bookshop. I was browsing the shelves, pulling out occasional titles – based on titles and spines – to flip through and dip into, when I suddenly froze. The whole of me. My hands, my feet, my brain. I had to remember to breathe out, and then tell myself to breathe in again. It was as if I suddenly realised how many books there are in the world and the unfathomable scale of it got stuck in my throat. I replaced the book, turned my back and went to the opposite end of the shop to look at tote bags.

It was the first, but not the worst, of my bookshop freezes. It’s not just in the children’s section anymore. Sometimes it happens at the door as I’m going in and I have to be asked to move out the way by a customer leaving with a happy bag stuffed with new titles. It happened once on a time-sensitive mission to pick up a gift – I was aiming for the cookery books but lost five minutes being frozen in front of autobiographies of sporting celebs.

The crude feeling is, ‘How will a book by little me ever stand up in this paper metropolis?’ But there’s another, more complicated feeling. That is, there are just too many books. Too many to read, too many to want, too many that look the same, too many that aren’t good enough, too many that are dazzling, too many classics, too many to count, too many to sell, too many to justify. Or maybe not too many, but so many. But those feelings spawn others, including the ever-ready-to-pounce self-doubt and its attendant anxiety. The industry is so very fast paced… breathe in… and all that paper, all that money… breathe out… I am not good enough, dazzling enough... breathe in again...

Emily rescued me on the first freeze; without exception since then it has been one of the superheroes that are booksellers. Most won't know I've frozen - I just look like any other slightly lost customer. This all said, on my last visit to a bookshop – Ginger and Pickles – I did not freeze. This might be because the owner has created a beautifully unintimidating space: there are typewriters and plants and a loveseat. It has a carefully curated selection of books arranged so that many of them face outwards, making the shelves seem less like skyscrapers. Funny, because it was the skyscraper effect that I used to love – especially if ladders were necessary. But other favourite shops have plants or friendly, oversized teddies, and choose and arrange titles with enormous care, and I’ve still frozen.

I’m going to have to do some research – I should have done it before merrily blogging on the topic. Is there a name for a fear of bookshops? Does anyone else share this odd and extremely-unhelpful-for-a-writer feeling? Or is it, as I fear, just me? I’d love to hear from anyone who does, or who has in the past experienced similar stickiness and can share how they became unstuck.

 

 

P.S. Three years after my first bookshop freeze, I will this month make my first (and hopefully not only) appearance in the Edinburgh International Book Festival programme. On Sunday 28^th, Joan Lennon and I will be running a workshop in the Baillie Gifford Creation Station based on our new nonfiction, Talking History: 150 Years of Speakers and Speeches. If you’re in Edinburgh and know any 8-12s who would like to have some fun learning about famous speeches, do grab them a ticket here! Copies of the book are available in the Festival bookshop...