Wednesday 29 April
6.30-9pm Free
Please join us for the UK launch of Finders, Keepers (Salt) by friend of the shop, Nicholas Royle. Nick will be joined in conversation by Gareth Evans, who regularly loiters with intent.
What remains when a reader closes a book for the last time? For Nicholas Royle, second-hand books are repositories for ‘inclusions’ – the physical fragments of lives left between the pages. In this third instalment of his acclaimed series, Royle tracks the secret histories found in charity shops and on dusty shelves nationwide. His quest is as eccentric as it is infectious: he follows hand-drawn maps to read books on the very streets they depict; he returns ‘lost’ volumes to individuals named on forgotten business cards; and he compares ‘doubles’ – those rare instances where different authors share a title.
From rescuing rain-soaked volumes to uncovering tender Christmas messages, Finders, Keepers is a playful, moving celebration of the ‘Royle Mail’ philosophy: a journey through the literature of the everyday and the enduring connection between those who read.
Review of this book
‘The way it reads like a good pub conversation or chat with an interesting stranger on the train, makes its whole construction and flow seem easy… [It is] a form of autobiography that evades the obvious… an engaging, peculiar, original and at times hilarious read. I commend it to you.’ —Rupert Loydell, International Times
Praise for the Series
‘Royle invests more passion into his subject than EL James did in whips... I haven’t laughed harder with a book for a long time.’ —Nick Duerden, Observer
“A bibliophile’s dream . . . He observes his own mania with wit and wry self- deprecation.” —Jonathan Coe, The Guardian
Nicholas Royle has authored well over a hundred short stories, collected in various editions, as well as novellas and novels. He has edited countless anthologies, including the The Best British Short Stories series for many years. He divides his time between Manchester and London and runs Nightjar Press. The first two books in the series discussed tonight - White Spines and Shadow Lines - are widely acclaimed bestsellers.