Independent Bookshop of the Month: Pages of Hackney

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Independent Bookshop of the Month: Pages of Hackney

Our July Bookshop of the Month is Pages of Hackney, who have been supplying Lower Clapton with books for over sixteen years.

Tell us the story of your shop.

We’re a small but eclectically stocked shop on the Lower Clapton Road in Clapton, Hackney. We opened the doors in 2008, sixteen years ago, when times were quite different! The premises had been a post office and before that a barbershop, but there’d been no bookshops in the Clapton area for thirty years, and Eleanor (the owner) wanted to change that. When I (Jo) started in 2014 I knew that to run a truly inclusive shop would be a challenge; our borough is culturally diverse, a mix of old and new neighbourhoods, with 47 per cent being Black and Global Majority groups. My priority was to make sure that as wide a demographic as possible could see themselves reflected in the stock choice. The window display is a great tool for this, as well as running events that reflect the community, with an ‘if you build it they will come’ approach. Our aim, then and now, is to be a friendly, welcoming bookshop that feels accessible and inclusive: we want each customer to feel that the bookshop is for them, and we’re now proud to have a very varied and loyal customer base.

I knew that to run a truly inclusive shop would be a challenge; our borough is culturally diverse, a mix of old and new neighbourhoods[. . .] My priority was to make sure that as wide a demographic as possible could see themselves reflected in the stock choice.

Pages of Hackney

We started with just two people and now have six regular members of staff. We run a full programme of author events, two monthly book groups, a subscription service, a website that shows (pretty much in real time) everything we stock, plus we also provide book stalls at various public lectures across the city every week. We’re pretty busy.

What are the booksellers reading at the moment?

Jo: Above Us the Sea by Ania Card and Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad.

Ollie: Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright and The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk.

Eleanor: The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright and Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan.

Billie: The Lasting Harm by Lucia Osborne-Crowley.

Telka: The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk and The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Savaş

Sebastian: Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg

What’s your favourite thing about your shop?

My favourite thing is the collective experience of our author events, a group of people in a room witnessing a conversation, there’s nothing else like it, and it’s the best kind of brain food. I also love our Pay it Forward scheme. During the pandemic I saw that Lighthouse Bookshop in Edinburgh had one and asked them how it worked and they generously told us how to set it up. Now we have a board right by the till that helps people on low (or no) income buy books with no questions asked. Since then a number of other indies such as The Broadway Bookshop have set one up too. Our customers are so generous and keen to help each other, and we have customers who use it regularly: it’s beautiful to see it being used and working in this way.

Which Faber book is the most popular in your shop?

The Claire Keegan novellas Small Things Like These and So Late in the Day regularly grace our bestseller chalkboard, while Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen has been a perennial favourite for years. This week our bestselling Faber book by far is Adam by Gboyega Odubanjo.

Which other local independent business would you love visitors to discover?

Wild & Woolly is our local wool shop who just celebrated their ten year anniversary. They are a women-run community shop in the truest sense of the word, they also have a pay it forward donation scheme, late night knitty lock-ins, sweater club, fix your own knitting support and the most imaginative window displays you will ever see. Other favourite local businesses are the lovely Lodestar Coffee, Casey’s and Today Bread who keep us running on coffee and delicious lunches.

Which book do you wish everyone had read?

Eleanor: Held by Anne Michaels. Spanning four generations, the novel bears witness to the horrors of war from 1917 to nearly present times. Anne herself says this, ‘Every day writing this book I asked myself: in these urgent times, what voice might be small enough to be heard; what do we need now.’ Reading this book could be a vital part of the answer.

Ollie: Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman. Through a process she describes as ‘critical fabulation’, Saidiya Hartman recovers and animates the lives of young Black women in the US that dared to live as if they were free during the earliest years of the twentieth century. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments offers justice to those lives by successfully enacting on the page the riotous queerness of its subjects, and it is for me a peerless study of the ways in which lives can be lived each day as radical forms collective resistance. Far more than a portrait of a time or a collection of recovered histories, I think of this book as a manual or blueprint for unlearning and always take great pleasure in recommending it.

Jo: The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye. In a time when misinformation and polarising rhetoric on trans issues is worse than ever, I wish everyone would read books by the people who experience these issues first-hand.

Do you have a favourite type of customer?

My favourite type of customer are those that are up for a chat! Hands down the best things are the conversations and social encounters that are possible in the shop; that you can have a potentially mind-shifting conversation through talking about a book. Lots of customers say that they feel the shop is a safe space, and that is exactly what we wanted to achieve. Customers sometimes message us to say a book helped them through a difficult time, and that really makes it feel worthwhile. I am grateful when people trust our recommendations, come back for more and when we get to know their tastes – it’s very rewarding.

What would people find surprising about being a bookseller?

It’s often perceived as a job for introverts, and I’m not sure that’s the case as it is very unpredictable! People imagine that you get to sit down and read on the job – there’s never time for that. Being a bookseller is a lot of admin and stock management but mostly it involves about a hundred interactions a day, so you definitely have to be a people person to enjoy it. It’s a mixture of menial as well as high-stakes social tasks, one moment you can be unpacking a box, booking in stock, updating spreadsheets and emptying bins and the next you can be meeting your favourite author for a stock signing or proof drop. You just don’t know who is going to walk in next, and no two days are the same.