Trip to The Bookish Type in Leeds

At the end of June I went to Leeds to meet my friend Leanne and to visit The Bookish Type, which is an independent queer bookshop in Leeds. I can't remember where I first heard of it, but I've been wanting to go, so I said that on Twitter and Leanne replied saying she'd love to go. I haven't seen Leanne or her partner and child since Christmas 2019, so it was well overdue and I was really looking forward to it. I went into Leeds a bit early and ate some lunch by myself in Costa, having parked in the Merrion Centre, before I went upstairs to meet Leanne. The shop isn't huge, but it does have soooo many books. They're all nicely categorised, too. First on the left was children's and middle grade, so I spent some time looking at that. I was pleased to see the Murder Most Unladylike series on the shelves! 

I was thrilled to see so many books that I've already read, and books by friends of mine. It was so lovely! I picked up three books and some badges. 

The YA section was big - two shelves - and I asked the person behind the counter if I could take some photos of it. I always do this in bookshops as I don't want to annoy anyone, and I also don't want them to think that I'm taking photos of books I want so that I can buy them online later as I think that's rude IF you have the money to buy in store. The person said yes and I said I was a YA blogger and was really impressed by their selection. There were books about teens of all races, with other intersections like disability, and not just contemporary YA but fantasy and so on too. The person thanked me for the compliments and said they didn't always know what to buy, but tried to focus on British YA and not have solely American YA. 

Leanne bought a book for her little girl and then three books for herself. We went for coffee afterwards and spent quite a while catching up. I set off home around 4.10 and didn't get home until 4.50 - I've forgotten what being in queuing traffic is like! I used to work in Leeds and I honestly don't know how I did it! 

Here's the YA shelves what I got:

Look how vibrant and colourful they are - absolutely gorgeous. The person behind the counter and I had a discussion about how queer YA has come on so far since we were teens. This is one of the reasons I love it so much! It just didn't exist 20 years ago when I was a teenager!

The book on the left is a sequel and I read the first one ages ago and have been meaning to buy this one. The other two just looked good

La! If you've seen It's A Sin, you'll know why this has become popular. I have a t-shirt too. The others are inclusive badges and I am an inclusive queer. Thanks!

New Independent Bookshop in Barnsley

I live in Barnsley in South Yorkshire, and although the town itself stayed Labour in the recent election, my constituency, on the west of the town, went Tory. I was absolutely devastated - I still am. I immediately started thinking of things I could do to make a difference. One of the things I will do is email my new MP a lot - if she wants to represent me she can hear my voice. I'll be polite, don't worry! But she can definitely hear me. 

I thought of a couple of other things I can do that I will be putting into place in 2020. They both require applying for things, but I would love to make a difference in some way or other. Then I saw a tweet about a new independent bookshop opening in Barnsley town centre on Monday6 16th December, and I decided I would put my money where my mouth is and go support an independent shop.

Barnsley has only had The Works or supermarkets to buy books from since WHSmith shut down a couple of years ago. We don't have any other bookshops. It's a pretty poor state of affairs, actually. So I'm really happy The Book Vault has opened up. 

I asked my friend Sarah to come along too and said we could get some lunch afterwards. She then had to pick me up because my car was broken - I have had the worse luck with my car this year, this is the third thing I've had go wrong with it - but she was happy to and then we headed into town.

The shop was busy when we got there. There was a member of staff greeting us and we told her we had seen them on Twitter and decided to visit. There's quite a few books. Nothing was labelled when we visited which I found strange, but this may change. There was a big crime/thriller section. There were a few YA books filed in with the adult books, but I think kinks like that might get ironed out as the weeks go on.

I headed across to the YA section and thought it had a good selection of books. There were titles I haven't seen in shops before, as well as some popular books, and lots that I've read! I liked the section.

I bought three books and will definitely go back!

The outside of the shop. It's on a street that has a lot of charity shops on it, and it seems to get a lot of footfall. I hope people go into the shop!

One of the YA shelves

The other one

We headed for lunch after visiting the bookshop

And here's what I bought for £24.97!