It was Love Your Bookshop Day today! My most-frequented (and beloved) local bookshops are Avid Reader/Where the Wild Things Are and Pulp Fiction, but I know and love many others, including a variety of those I haven’t yet visited in person.
So today I finished cutting out silhouettes early (mid-afternoon, after Pulp had closed for the day, alas) and snuck out to sketch in bookshops (as opposed to sketching on bookshops, as I did for the launch of Flyaway).
This time I bought books, delivered books, chatted about books, got advice on books, and then sat on a chair behind a column and drew people.
I thoroughly enjoy drawing people in bookstores. There’s this quality of arrested movement. People deliberately settling to read tend to have very stable poses, but browsers are like living statues.
A friend met me there and we stopped for a drink and live music across the road (very quick backlit bar sketch, there!) and discussed scandals and the possible uses of observation journals.
Another bookshop that feels local is Book Moon Books in Easthampton, Massachusetts — these are some sketches from last November.
About 2/9 of Travelogues is actually me travelling to and from Book Moon Books.
It was at Book Moon that I finally discovered that my ideal of bookshop work (although I very much enjoyed my time on staff at Avid a few years back) is doing my work in the centre of the store while people murmur about books around me.
And finally — here are some rather older sketches from a Love Your Bookshop Day six(!) years ago, done for Avid Reader.
Kathleen Jennings 
Love them. Such beauty and character in each sketch. The personality of the person and the author shining through.
Thank you so much, Iseult!
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