Our Bookshop of the Month is Juno Books – a friendly feminist and queer community bookshop in Chapel Walk in Sheffield. We spoke to Sarah & Rosie.
Tell us the story of your shop.
We began chatting about starting a bookshop as a bit of an idle daydream during lockdown, but became steadily more drawn into the idea and by late 2021 we knew we wanted to turn it into reality. We also knew early on that we wanted to focus on feminist and queer books, given how little attention books by women and marginalised genders have often received in mainstream media and how great so many of these writers are. We opened in October 2022, and it has been such a consistent joy to provide a space where people can see themselves and their experiences reflected back in the books on our shelves. There’s also a really vibrant bookish community in Sheffield, and we love working alongside all the other brilliant indie bookshops here.
What are the booksellers reading at the moment?
Sarah has just finished Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann about a herd of sheep turned detectives trying to solve the murder of their shepherd, which has been a lot of fun to read, and recently loved the hilarious and heartbreaking Fight Night by Miriam Toews. She is looking forward to starting Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo, which is our May book club choice. Rosie is reading Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto, which has been on her TBR list forever, and it being a queer book club pick finally made her do it. Before that she just finished The Museum of Lost and Fragile Things, a beautiful memoir by Suzanne Joinson about growing up northern, working class, and in a cult. She also really enjoyed Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis, a hilarious, arresting debut about deradicalising ISIS brides in Iraq.
What’s your favourite thing about your shop?
We love everything, it’s a dream come true that this is actually where we go to work everyday! But we are particularly proud of our expansive neurodiversity and gender and sexuality sections, which we get regular feedback on from customers who are relieved to find books that reflect their lives in ways they’ve often not been able to access before in a bookshop. We also have a similarly diverse kids and young adult selection and a really cosy nook that parents and kids can cuddle up in together and read.
Tell us your ideal day in your neighbourhood – especially other local independent businesses you’d love visitors to discover.
We very rarely get a chance to hang out beyond working hours, so if we had a free day we would probably begin with a leisurely coffee and cake from Marmadukes on Norfolk Row, our favourite cafe close to the shop. Sheffield has some incredible art galleries in the city centre, including Site Gallery, the Millennium Gallery and Graves Gallery, tucked away upstairs in the Central Library, so we would probably spend some time there checking out the latest exhibitions. Lunch would be noodles at Mr Miyagi, a legendary Japanese restaurant on Division Street, followed by a wander round some gorgeous indie craft shops, such as Moonko, Sheffield Makers and Bird’s Yard and popping by Leah’s Yard for a hot chocolate at Bullion’s Chocolate Bar and a chat with Alex at La Biblioteka, another great indie bookshop in the city. We’d nip into The Old Shoe bar in Orchard Square for a reviving blackcurrant wine, before heading to Kelham Island for dinner at Cutlery Works and a nightcap at The Fat Cat or Shakespeare’s. What a day!
Do you have a favourite type of customer?
So many! We love it when someone comes in experiencing a bit of a reading slump, we recommend a few favourites and then they come back some weeks later to rave about what they’ve read. There is no finer feeling as a bookseller! It’s also incredibly satisfying when we’ve reunited a customer with a long lost favourite (such as the time we found a childhood book our customer had not read for over sixty years) or a customer appears with exceptionally vague information about a book and we manage to find it for them – we really enjoy a bit of sleuthing! We also have some faves who don’t actually buy books but just pop in to say hello, including the marvellous Jackie who arrives every now and then with sweets and boxes of biscuits for us!
What’s the best book recommendation you’ve ever given?
Probably all the people we’ve recommended Big Swiss to: it’s got everything in it, it’s hilarious, filthy, profound, ground-breaking, weird and disgusting. It’s been a pretty guaranteed hit and they love to come back and tell us so. Other than that Rosie loves recommending Sarah Winman’s Still Life to anyone who comes in saying ‘they just want something joyful’: it’s truly distilled sunshine in a book. On the other hand she loves recommending Natalie Diaz’s poetry to anyone looking to have their heart ripped out and be turned on at the same time. Sarah is a huge fan of Irish women writers and is constantly recommending Jan Carson and Claire Keegan to everyone who comes in.
Who’s your dream author to visit the shop – dead or alive?
Sarah’s dream would be to meet Tove Jansson, as much to talk about her adult fiction and art work as her popularity with the Moomins, and to see what she was like as a person – she seemed so charismatic and full of life. In terms of living authors, I’d love to meet either Sarah Waters or Lauren Groff whose novels are slices of immersive historical perfection. Though I’d probably be too nervous to say anything sensible to them! Rosie would love to meet Constance Debré, partly because she fancies her, but also because she is such a great writer and all round force of nature and it would be amazing to see what she was like in real life. She’d also love to meet Audre Lorde but would probably burst into tears with overwhelm about how magnificent she is, so maybe it’s best that she can’t . . .
Will you tell us a shop secret? A mystery is also acceptable.
If you ask for a horror recommendation from us, the book won’t ever be something that either of us have personally read . . . we are both massive scaredy cats and just cannot do it. Thankfully, we have a very loyal band of horror readers who make excellent recommendations we can pass on to others!
What do you still find surprising about being a bookseller?
How collegiate the bookselling world is – everyone who we have met so far who is involved with the trade, whether other booksellers, reps, publishers, and so on has been genuinely lovely, supportive of each other and enthusiastic about what they do. It’s so refreshing to see how excited people are about getting brilliant books into readers’ hands and it’s such a joy to be part of this wider network of people.
You can visit Juno Books at 24 Chapel Walk, Sheffield, or order from their Bookshop.org storefront here.
Think we should feature your local independent bookshop? Tell us about your favourite indie bookseller here.
