Saturday Books

My name is Francis Sheppard. Saturday Books was started ten years ago. Ongoing work has been the restoration of the interior of a mid-nineteenth-century building, originally three town houses, part of which is now warehouse and offices. Saturday Books has space at ground level, which houses children s books, teenage novels and graphic texts. Literature, popular philosophy and the arcane - paperback reading to be found immediately on the second floor. Up there, there is a Coffee Room, where serious browsers may want to take a pile of books for an afternoon of reading. Down the corridor are rooms full of Natural History, Maritime, Flight, Motor Transport, Railways, Canals, Travel, First and Second World Wars, European and Colonial History, Battles, Craft, Gardening and Cookery, then finally Poetry, Drama, Music, Religious Thought and Art. Much of the trade is carried out online, but Saturday Books' purpose is to serve the West Midlands region. What is sold in the shop is heavily discounted against Amazon and Abebooks counterparts. Up to Lockdown, a poetry scene flourished on Saturdays in the top floor Coffee Room. Since lockdown, the event has expanded, is entitled Poetry Breakfast, and takes place in a pub immediately opposite the bookshop, that would otherwise be empty at that time of day. Saturday Books wants to be at the heart of the local community! Local media, including yell.com, encourage families and solitary bibliophiles alike, to make the journey over. The building is cold so layers are needed, even unseasonally, but a warm welcome awaits. Customers will come home with an armful of books, encouraged to tell their friends that literary life does still go on in the locality. In an era of declining social interaction, we provide public space for local groups to meet, for book clubs and other small events, obviously but the bookshop offers public space in a more general sense, in which people meet not only with authors and genres previously unknown to them, but also like minds. Customers come to know one another, swap favourite reads as well as share problems, and even arrange to meet. Chain booksellers are set up for patrons to make choices and then leave; we want them to stay!