Used bookshops – turning up the volumes

The Book Shop - Rose's store on Clarence Road

Strolling along a bookshelf on a lazy Saturday afternoon, searching for that volume you always wanted to read, or just mindlessly scanning the titles, bathed in the glow of marinated wisdom. The thoroughly-thumbed, the rare first edition, the trashy novel, – the hope, the delight, the indulgence of shopping for second-hand books.

If this is what tickles your spine and turns your page, you may not think Hackney quite the place for you, but read on.
Though the borough is hardly the Hay-on-Wye of London, nor is it the bibliophilic desert that one might think from a casual perusal of any relevant directory. There are lots of used books for sale in Hackney; you just have to know where to look for them.

Let’s start with the tradition source of dog-eared tomes: second-hand bookshops. Stoke Newington boasts two classic examples of this type of establishment – Ocean Books and the Church Street Bookshop, which face each other on Church Street near the corner with Lordship Road.

In the eastern part of the borough, the Book Shop on Clarence Road caters for a similar market, with an accent on black and children’s literature.

Sadly, recent years have witnessed the demise of such cultural icons as the Hoxton Book Depository and the Dalston branch of Oxfam Books and Music (the latter once boasted a veritable cult following complete with own-brand blog and band. Dalston Oxfam still sells books, but they now compete for the shopper’s eye with fetching purple nylon trousers and frilly green dress shirts).

With the advent of the internet, used booksellers have had to go the extra mile to bring their stock to customers; many now offer book search services or sell books on-line in addition to in their shops. And it’s a tough business. Rose at the Book Shop claims that her main aim is ‘to provide cheap, affordable books for everyone’, but she admits that this is difficult in the present economic climate.

Vincent Keys of Ocean Books claims that over the last ten years half the second-hand bookshops in the UK have closed. His neighbour Tim Watson of Church Street Bookshop explains that ‘if a portion of what people are buying is on-line, that tends to eat up a fair amount of their mental book budget’. This has put the pinch on booksellers such as Rose, Vincent and Tim, who carry on in their trade largely for the love of it.

Yet truly to appreciate the second-hand book market in Hackney, one must think beyond the traditional dedicated shop. For most denizens of the borough, charity shops and street markets are probably the best sources of cheap reading material. Such places are typically less pricey than specialised second-hand stores, and in the case of charity shops, purchasers have the added benefit of giving to a worthy cause when they put down their money in exchange for a serendipitous find.

In addition to Oxfam Dalston (which sells at the high end of its market), charity shops carrying good supplies of books include the Church Street Mind shop, the quirky Community of Reconciliation and Fellowship shop at the top of Mare Street, the super-tidy Salvation Army branch at the lower end, and the tiny Bosnian Community Action Charity Shop on Lower Clapton Road.

Street markets where books can often be found include the Kingsland Road weekend market (many volumes here are actual antiques) and ad hoc pavement sales on Stoke Newington Church Street (near the fire station or opposite Marton Road) and at the southern tip of London Fields, facing Broadway Market.

Look out also for sales of old stock at libraries, as well as for books sold at jumble sales. The prices here tend to be better than anywhere else, and you never know what treasures you will find.

Finally, it is worth mentioning three other sources: the brand-new Pages of Hackney bookshop on Lower Clapton Road, which has a shelf for second-hand; Stoke Newington Bargain Bookshop on Stoke Newington High Street – though not strictly a second-hand shop it sells books in a similar price range; and Megapress Bookshop on Green Lanes, which has a selection of second-hand books in Turkish.

While it can’t be denied that book-lovers need to keep their eyes peeled in order to find bargains in Hackney, the observant among us still have plenty to choose from.

Postscript: For those of you so short of time that you have to buy on-line, try www.greenmetropolis.com, which sells books at a flat rate of £3.75 (including delivery) and uses a good part of that money to plant trees.

The Book Shop
58 Clarence Road
London E5 8HB

Bosnian Community Action Charity Shop
100 Lower Clapton Road
London E5 0QR

Church Street Bookshop
142 Stoke Newington Church Street
London N16 0JU
020 7241 5411

Community of Reconciliation and Fellowship
407 Mare Street
E8 1HY
020 8985 7356

Megapress Bookshop
106 Green Lanes
N16 9EH
020 7923 1485

Mind
11 Stoke Newington Church Street
N16 0NX
020 7812 9210

Ocean Books
127 Stoke Newington Church Street
N16 0UH
020 7502 6319

Oxfam
570-572 Kingsland Road
E8 4AH
020 7923 1532

Pages of Hackney
70 Lower Clapton Road
London E5 0RN
07961 444 807
www.pagesofhackney.co.uk

Salvation Army
70 Mare Street
E8 4RT
020 8985 4410

Stoke Newington Bargain Bookshop
153 Stoke Newington High Street
N16 0NY
020 7249 8983
www.stokenewingtonbookshop.co.uk