Katie Clapham is an author and bookstore owner in the small English seaside town of Lytham St Annes. I’ve been enjoying her weekly Substack newsletter, where she recounts the highs, the lows, the quirky conversations, and the entertaining incidents that take place in the bookshop. Clapham has now developed these weekly diary entries into a book that chronicles a year in the life of her shop. She writes, “you realise that all of the books that you have sold over the years stay linked to the shop with an invisible thread that means sometimes, somewhere, even a decade later, someone might speak fondly of your little shop, where they got that book that time.” If you’re reading this, you’re probably a bookstore fan who’d enjoy this book (especially if you enjoyed Shaun Bythell’s Wigtown bookstore chronicles [The Diary of a Bookseller, etc.] or even 84, Charing Cross Road). If you’ve ever wondered about the daily workings of an independent bookstore, Receipts from the Bookshop will be an illuminating delight.
—Haley, Phinney Books, Seattle, WA
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