Top Ten Tuesday #388

Hi everyone! I hope you’ve all had a good week since I last did one of these. As I mentioned in my last post, I went to see the stage show of Moulin Rouge on Thursday and it was INCREDIBLE. I was a little worried that it wouldn’t live up to the film for me, but it was a *pardon the awful and niche pun* spectacular experience, the cast were amazing, the staging was incredible and some of the songs that I wasn’t quite sure about what they’d done with them from listening to the cast album actually turned out to be some of my favourite moments in the show, which just goes to show you really do need to see the live thing before you judge! I definitely left the theatre feeling like I just wanted to go back in there and experience it all over again, which is always the sign of a great show.

Anyway, it’s Tuesday, so time for another Top Ten Tuesday, courtesy of Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. Today, in honour of National Bookshop Day (which was on Saturday here in the U.K.), we’re talking about our Favourite Bookstores/Bookstores We’d Like To Visit. I did a post on Bookshops I’d Like To Visit a few years back, so this list will mainly be my favourite bookshops, but I didn’t have quite enough, so I added a few extra bookshops I’d like to visit that I didn’t feature on the previous list of them I did to make up the full list of 10:

Favourite Bookshops:

1. Foyles Charing Cross Road

Every time I step into this bookshop, it just feels like coming home. It’s basically bookworm heaven, there’s such a massive selection of books, whatever you’re in the mood for, you can find it here. I also really love that they get in some US releases that haven’t got a UK publisher, as it’s meant I can get books I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to. Whenever I used to come down to London from Cambridge, I would always try to make a stop here, and now I live in London, I can literally just get the bus there whenever I want (which of course means I haven’t been in since I moved! Must change that soon!).

2. Waterstones (Sauchiehall Street), Glasgow

Am I a bad book lover if I say I love this Waterstones more than the one in Piccadilly? Whenever I go to Glasgow, I always make it a point to stop off here as it’s one of my favourite places. It’s such a beautiful shop, it’s MASSIVE so there’s a wide range of choices, no matter what your reading tastes and I could happily spend hours and hours in there. There are several Waterstones in Glasgow, but this is definitely the best one!

3. Waterstones, Piccadilly

Okay so when I say I love the Waterstones in Glasgow more than this one, it is a really close competition as I do love this one a lot too. Waterstones flagship London shop is basically book lover paradise, it’s the BIGGEST bookshop in EUROPE and basically everything you could ever want can be found in here. It’s another place that I always made sure to stop off in whenever I was in London, and again, I would love to go more now that I live here (though it is much quicker to go to the admittedly smaller Waterstones that’s just down the street from me!).

4. The Book Nook (Stirling)

I so wish this place had been open when I’d still been at uni in Stirling because I don’t think I would have ever left it! Still, in my couple of trips back since the shop opened two years ago, it’s been a place I’ve made a point to visit because it’s so lovely! It’s a second hand bookshop/cafe, with a reasonably wide selection of books and they do fabulous hot chocolate and cakes. I’m still kicking myself for not buying the hardcover edition of Vicious they had the last time I was in!

5. Transreal Fiction (Edinburgh)

This is one of my favourite independent bookshops, it’s a specialist Sci-Fi/Fantasy shop, so you can imagine the field day I have when I go in here! The first time I went here, I managed to find copies of VE Schwab’s The Archived and The Unbound which I don’t think were published in the UK at the time (they had the US paperbacks, I think), so as you can imagine, that instantly endeared me to the place. Edinburgh is brilliant for bookshops and if you’re a Sci-Fi/Fantasy fan, I really do highly recommend this one as they have a great selection.

6. Blackwells South Bridge (Edinburgh)

Yes, I had to make the distinction as there is more than one Blackwells in Edinburgh! This one is the one that has fiction books, I think the other is an academic bookseller on one of the university campuses. I really love this shop as it’s so neat and well organised, and everything is really easy to find. It’s got a really nice size YA section, and there’s a Cafe Nero in there as well, so it’s a good place to go around lunchtime as you can instantly resolve it if you get hungry!

7. Heffers, Cambridge

Honestly, I’m not sure when or why I started going to Waterstones in Cambridge more than Heffers as Heffers does have a bigger selection of books. Still I have really great memories of this bookshop as it’s where my dad used to take me to get books when I was younger, whenever I got a treat for doing well in school or something like that, we’d always go to Heffers and I always really enjoyed myself, so yeah, fond memories.

Bookshops I’d Like To Visit:

8. Goldsboro Books (London)

Every time I see one of their gorgeous special editions, I’m always tempted to go and visit Goldsboro Books, but I never have. I think it’s in a similar area to Foyles though, so maybe the next time I go there, I might try and make a stop in here too? It looks like a really lovely shop, so I definitely want to try and visit.

9. Topping and Company (Bath)

I have been to Bath but for some reason we didn’t stop into this shop when we were there (I guess we were only there a couple of days and had other things we wanted to do!). I’ve heard amazing things about this particular shop, so I really want to go and check it out in person, maybe I’ll go back to Bath one day and do another Bookshop tour in a similar style to the one I did for Edinburgh a few years back?

10. BookBar (London)

I heard about this shop, I think maybe last year, and it sounds so cool! It’s basically a bookshop/wine bar which sounds like the perfect combination to me and it looks like a really cute shop. It is on the other side of London to where I live, but I’m sure I could make the trip out one day.

So there we go, those are some of my favourite bookshops, and some bookshops I’d still like to visit. Have you been to any of these bookshops? What are your favourite bookshops? Let me know in the comments!

I’ll be back next week with another Top Ten Tuesday, though I will be changing the topic once again, as the original topic, Books I Read On Vacation, is one that I’ve already done here twice, and I’m not sure I have anything more to add on it seeing as I’ve not really been on holiday much in the past two years! So instead, I’m going to use a topic I saw on another blog recently, and do Book Titles Beginning With The Letter “A”.