What a boast! MOST enjoyable?? MOST BOASTFUL perhaps! The earlier motto was:
and this remains accurate. What we seem to be specialising in is SURVIVING, and we can only survive in this beautiful but congested and hidden place because we do try to offer the "Compleat" bookshop experience, despite the fact that, according to an old friend, Brian MacDonald
Actually how Scarthin Books really operates can now be read in verse by clicking on WHIMSIES and reading the Ballad of Scarthin Books or our authoratitive article The Ecology of Books.
OR you could ask the opinion of GUARDIAN UNLIMITED for which we extend our appreciation of being included in such a short-list.
So,welcome to Scarthin Books, a sort of One Stop Bookshop. People always ask what we "specialise" in,and the answer can also be in DIVERSITY. We are a major stockist of new books, with some forty thousand carefully chosen titles on the shelf and an efficient and very resourceful international ordering service for individuals, schools and institutions. We buy and sell second hand and antiquarian books, with a stock of about 45,000 on the shelf and with rapidly growing worldwide sales via a net stock of over 3000 volumes. We just about keep in order a considerable range of second hand sheet music, recently (December 3rd.'07) put straight and enormounsly augmented by our scholarly Edmund. We also boast a homely cafe with many curious exhibits on almost the only un-booked walls in the building and a children's book room. We are publishers of books on Derbyshire, local history and the popular Family Walks series.
E-mails, to clare@scarthinbooks.com are as welcome or unwelcome as letters, faxes, phone-calls and ansaphone recordings. Barring mishaps, ALL messages will be answered, orders quickest of all, publishing enquiries slowest of all, offers of books usually within a day or two (the river of books is always in spate here, "for rain has been falling far off at their fountains"). We are now supplying virtually all new books priced at £19.95 or over at 10% off (or more, if subjects of "special offers")
We like to link to other interesting pages, particularly literary, scientific, ecological and thought-provoking - as well as to other small businesses providing services which are useful or local or singular or run by friends/relatives - or all of these!
Satisfying, isn't it when you are struck by a notion that is both blindingly obviously true, but has (apparently) struck no-one else before. Such, it seems, is the above observation of an experience which surely we all have in common! But perhaps Google is not yet the perfect test of originality.You thought of it first! At POETRY READINGS, people just do not know what to do with their eyes.You look at the ground, in the air, close your eyes, anything to avoid looking AT the speaker while you squirm. Contrast this with listening to live music, even if it's pretty bad. You are either relaxed with a pint, trying to talk with your friends over the racket, or you are visually summing up the band, or even devouring the singer with your eyes! At a gig, there is no requirement to pretend that something solemn and holy is happening, you won't offend anyone by leaving.STORYTELLING suffers from a related syndrome, because storytelling is holy too. You MUST BE ENJOYING this revival of the ethnic human aural tradition! Well, SOMETIMES storytelling is really funny, unexpected, moving or elating - but often it is not, and you must (in this case) keep staring at the speaker with an ecstatic grin on your face - THE STRAIN! So I hide from poetry readings and storytelling - would you like to put an event on at the Bookshop, just e-mail us!
DID WE DO WRONG? THE LIBRARY OF SAWN-OFF BOOKS describes one of our more recent commissions, which you may find amusing or, perhaps, outraging. Or for a more comprehensive rethink of the Book Trade, try clicking on The Ecology of Books
Our current mini-exhibition, banished to the Old Baldies' Room over the Christmas, New Year and Book-sale seasons, is of fifty years of the Sheefield Clarion Ramblers' Handbooks, edited by G.H.B.Ward. See Micro Exhibitions for more details of this (when I've written the blurb) and previous displays, or best of all, visit us!