John Sutherland
Shelf Reflection
The Face Pressed Against a Window: A Memoir
By Tim Waterstone
Atlantic Books 323pp £17.99
Last June, Tim Waterstone was awarded a knighthood for ‘services to bookselling’. But what is bookselling nowadays? The walk-in system, which has endured since William Caxton sold his wares in his Westminster shop, is now being crushed between the Scylla of Amazon and the Charybdis of AbeBooks.
‘What are you going to do about the browser problem?’ Waterstone was asked by a banker from whom he was once trying to raise funds. Stupid question. Encouraging it wholeheartedly was Waterstone’s principal article of faith. Young Tim’s first engagement with books, as a schoolboy in Crowborough, East Sussex, was at a village bookshop run by a Miss Santoro, who took a shine to him. He would go in and read whatever caught his fancy, and she even gave him somewhere to sit. He never bought a book.
Old-style book-buying typically meant going into a shop not knowing what you wanted and sampling the wares to find out. Often enough, like young Tim, one would leave having bought nothing but nevertheless feeling vaguely stimulated by having handled books.
The abolition of the Net Book Agreement
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm