My sister and I have been in London for a week and have been keeping ourselves busy. We’ve seen most of the major sites, walked all over the place checking out famous buildings, and visited several London bookstores. There’s a ton to write about – our visit to Warner Brothers studios for the “Making of Harry Potter” tour will be it’s own post – so for now I’m just going to share some of the bookstores we visited.

In an effort to keep my luggage from getting out of control, I tried to follow a couple of rules for bookstore shopping: one book per store and the book had to have some connection to London or the store itself. I didn’t quite follow that at every store, but pretty close! Here’s where we visited:

Lutyens & Rubinstein

On our first full day, Tuesday, we headed up to walk around Notting Hill before a visit to Kensington Palace. Lutyens & Rubinstein was the first store on my list that we happened to find. It was so cute – really small, but a pretty excellent selection of fiction in the basement. I picked up a copy of The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante, the second of her Neapolitan Novels, which was on a staff picks table.

The Notting Hill Bookshop

The Notting Hill Bookshop was another cute and crowded store on a quiet street in Notting Hill. I was a little disappointed I couldn’t find many staff picks, so I grabbed a UK copy of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

Waterstone’s (Leadenhall Market)

On Wednesday, after rain cleared up in the late afternoon, we went on a walk through London’s financial district to see some famous buildings. We also visited Waterstone’s in Leadenhall Market, a really cool indoor shopping area, because I wanted to get a tote bag for carrying around. I also grabbed a book, Hotel Alpha by Mark Watson, one of Waterstone’s Book Club picks.

Hatchard’s

On Friday we stumbled across Hatchard’s, London’s oldest bookstore, while walking along Picadilly. I really liked this one – five floors with an emphasis on history and a lot of new fiction. I grabbed one of their staff picks, Metroland by Julian Barnes: “Barnes writes with an extraordinarily accomplished style that successfully combines humor with a coming-of-age storyline.” They’re in the middle of voting on favorite novels of the last 200 years – the list to choose from is pretty great!

Any Amount of Books

On Saturday, Jackie (Farm Lane Books) came down to London to meet and visit some bookstores – it was so fun to meet a long-time blogging friend in person! Our first store was a used bookstore called Any Amount of Books. It was totally delightful – crowded, tall shelves, mixed up sections. Jenny found me a great-looking book, Jambusters by Julie Summers.

Foyles

Next we headed over to the Foyles flagship store on Charing Cross Road. Wow, was this place beautiful! It’s five enormous stories with, apparently, 200,000 titles along four miles of shelves. It was incredible… and I broke the rule there, grabbing two books – Be Awesome: Modern Life for Modern Ladies by Hadley Freeman and Underground Overground by Andrew Martin. The Freeman book was a staff recommendation: “This collection of essays by one of the Guardian’s wittiest columnists had me ‘LOL-ing’ throughout. Be Awesome is like chatting to a friend, it’s warm and funny and points out all the things you already know.” The Underground book was an impulse buy because I am obsessed with the Underground. 

Persephone Books

After a traditional lunch of fish and chips, we hiked over to Persephone Books, a publisher and bookseller. Persephone Books reprints “neglected fiction and nonfiction my mid-twentieth century (mostly) women writers.” I picked up two titles, Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield and The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The store is just beautiful – and so fun to see all the matching titles stacked up together.

Forbidden Planet

Yesterday we made a quick stop at Forbidden Planet, a “cult entertainment megastore” with books, memorabilia and comics. It was really crowded and we were both pretty tired, so we didn’t browse much. I bought Sisters by Raina Telgemeier because the description is about two sisters on a three week trip – so accurate.

Flourish & Blotts

And I couldn’t, in good conscience, end this post without a shout out to the most exciting bookstore of the entire trip, Flourish & Blotts in Diagon Alley! This was part of our Harry Potter studio tour – more later, I promise – that was just too delightful for words.

So there you have it, nine bookstores in seven days! At the moment, all of the books are piled in my suitcase for travel to Bath tomorrow. I think we’ll end up at a post office to ship some home before we head out to Greece at the end of the week. If you want to follow our adventures I suggest following me on Instagram. And I’m hoping to do a few posts on other and highlights when we get back in mid-September. 

Briefly | I AM LEAVING ON VACATION TODAY! Have I mentioned this trip before? Ha! Anyway, my sister and I are leaving tonight for a three week trip that will take us to England and Greece. It feels totally surreal, but I could not be more excited. Those photos all look a little depressing, but they’re accurate — it was a really long week to get here.

Eating and Drinking | At the moment, nothing, but we’re heading out soon to spend some time with our grandmas and have lunch at Olive Garden. I’m in the mood to stuff my face with pasta.

Reading | The only thing I could put in my brain this week was comics, so that’s what I did, finishing up volumes two and three of Alex + Ada by Jonathan Luna and Sarah Vaughn. It’s only a 15 issue series packaged in three trades, so definitely easy to pick up. I thought it was a really charming, heartfelt love story. If I’m not too tired, my two possible plane reads are Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and Black Diamonds by Catherine Bailey (nonfiction, about the lost history of the aristocratic Fitzwilliam family). I love rich people drama.

Packing | Speaking of books, I suppose people who saw this Instagram post might be wondering which books made the cut into my suitcase. In addition to Wolf Hall and Black Diamonds I also brought Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walters and My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. That still feels like too many books — I know I’m going to buy a bunch — but I couldn’t pick.

Watching | Since I wasn’t reading, I did a lot of watching — mostly finishing up a mediocre SyFy series, Alphas, mixed with a goofy Comedy Central show, Another Period. I really like that one, it’s kind of Downtown Abbey meets Inside Amy Schumer (feminist and crass, following the shenanigans of a rich family, available on Hulu).

Listening | I’ve got a couple of audio books queued up for the trip, What If? by Randall Monroe and Cinder by Marissa Meyer. Those represent my two audio weaknesses, quirky nonfiction and young adult dystopian drama.

Blogging | This week I shared some of my favorite resources for finding good nonfiction. Definitely check out the comments on that one — there were some great suggestions.

Hating | Normally I’m a really good sleeper — trust me, I know how lucky I am in that respect — but between anxiety, stress and excitement, I slept terrible most of the week. That made me particularly emotional and short-tempered, especially with the boyfriend, which I’m sorry about.

Loving | Speaking of the boyfriend, he deserves a special shout out. He’s holding down the home front while I’m away, didn’t make me feel bad (at all) about going on a huge trip without him, and was super supportive while I was losing my mind and working a ton the last few weeks. This will be the longest we’ll have gone without seeing each other since we started dating almost seven years ago so… yeah. I’ll miss him.

Loving II | Book Riot’s new Read or Die t-shirt might be my favorite thing ever.

Anticipating | London! Bath! Athens! Poros! A little over 12 hours from now I’ll be on a plane and heading out. I don’t anticipate blogging much, so if you want to follow our adventures I suggest following me on Instagram. I’m hoping to post regularly there and of course I’ll share some highlights in a post when I get back. Bon voyage!

It’s no secret that I love to make book lists… sometimes even more than I love reading books on those book lists. Today I wanted to share some of the places I go to get ideas for my book lists as as well as where I look for recommendations for new, excellent nonfiction. None of these are foolproof, but they definitely can provide some ideas for books to look into further.

Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalists

Book awards lists can be pretty hit and miss, but over the years I’ve discovered a couple of award categories that reliably select books that are in my wheelhouse. One is the Pulitzer Prize General Nonfiction list, which tends to award books with excellent reporting and strong writing. The National Book Award also, generally, has an interesting shortlist for nonfiction. I’m sure there are others, but these are the two I tend to gravitate towards most.

New Nonfiction from Citizen Reader

In February, Sarah at Citizen Reader started a weekly series called New Nonfiction where she lists upcoming titles with brief commentary on each one. Since I’m not always up on what is coming out right now, this list is often a good reminder of books I had on my radar or books I want to look into further.

Real Stories series from ABC-CLIO

Another resource that Sarah helped turn me on to is the Real Stories series. This is a series of reference books designed primarily for librarian’s doing reader’s advisory that offer a wealth of nonfiction suggestions based on reading tastes. There are offerings in Women’s Nonfiction, Investigative Writing, Biographies, Memoirs, Travel, and Food Lit. I’ve used Going Places, the book in the series on travel writing, quite a bit in my nonfiction research. These are a little more difficult to find (and probably too expensive for a personal collection), but might be available at your local library if you don’t mind quizzing a librarian.

New Books! from Book Riot

New Books! is a weekly newsletter of book recommendations curated by Liberty Hardy. Liberty reads a ton — reading truly is her super power — so there are always a variety of books to check out (both fiction and nonfiction). Liberty and Rebecca Joines Schinsky also host a weekly podcast on new books — All the Books! — but I haven’t listened to it much yet.

Specific Publishing Houses and Imprints

There are also some publishing houses and imprints — departments with a specific mission of focus — that I look at for great nonfiction. Some of my favorites that do almost exclusively nonfiction are part of the Perseus Books Group: Basic Books, PublicAffairs and Nation Books. Graywolf Press, a Minnesota publisher, does an annual Nonfiction Prize — I’ve loved many of the past winners. Other publishers that I’ve seen great, readable nonfiction from include Harper, Picador, Riverhead and Spiegel and Grau. But those are huge houses. If you find a book that really speaks to you, check the publisher and then visit their backlist — you’ll likely find similar books worth checking out.

Books About Books

I’m a sucker for books about books. I love reading them, and I love gathering potential new books to read from their recommendations. A couple that I’ve been getting ideas from recently are Read This! Handpicked Favorites from America’s Indie Bookstores and (more specifically for nonfiction) The Mother of All Book Lists by William Patrick Martin. My local librarian pointed this one out to me because she knows I love nonfiction — I love that it includes recommendations for all ages.

What are some of your favorite resources for finding new books, specifically new nonfiction?

Photo Credit: Orin Zebest via Flickr Creative Commons.

Briefly | One week until we leave for London! There’s more going on than that, but that’s about all I can focus on right now.

Time and Place | 8:15ish on my couch, thinking about breakfast and getting on with my day — I have to head up to our county fair this morning to take photos at a few events.

Eating and Drinking | Breakfast will include black tea, hard boiled eggs, a nectarine and some homegrown carrots (thanks, coworker with a garden!).

Reading | I finished 11/22/63 by Stephen King last Sunday afternoon, yay! I really enjoyed it — definitely a book that gives you a sense of King’s style without being too, well, Stephen King.

Since then I’ve had a hard time settling in with anything that requires a ton of attention. I did finish up Thor, Vol. 1: Goddess of Thunder by Jason Aaron and Russell Dauterman (fun but not my favorite comic ever) and The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips. I liked this one a lot, even if I’m not sure that I totally understood what happened. It was sort of like if The Yellow Wallpaper meets The Trial, except more fun.

I’m not sure what I’ll try to read today, if anything. I’ve been carrying around both In the Language of Miracles by Rajia Hassib and Where Everybody Looks Like Me by Ron Stodghill (Sept. 22 from Harper), but haven’t gotten far with either.

Watching | The boyfriend and I went to see Trainwreck, the new Amy Schumer/Judd Apatow movie, last night. We both agreed it was very funny, and had a particularly great performance from, of all people, LeBron James.

Blogging | This week I shared my responses to a reading habits survey I borrowed from other bloggers. I hope you’ll take it yourself and share responses — I think these are always a lot of fun.

Promoting | I don’t share a lot of writing from my day job here, but I wrote a piece this week that I’m proud of — a look at a new specialized court process, drug court, that is helping people with serious addictions. It’s changing lives in our community, and I’m really grateful for the people who shared their stories with me so I could write this piece.

Hating | My Secret Agent Gnome keychain broke! I don’t know where his body ended up, which is a bummer. Sorry, old friend.

Loving | In a week I’m going on a much needed vacation! For three weeks! I can’t quite believe it yet.

Avoiding | I haven’t started seriously packing, so I need to get on that pretty soon. It’s kind of overwhelming to think about everything I need to bring to be away from home that long.

Wanting | I’m hoping the humidity will take it down a notch today since I am going to be at the fair most of the early afternoon.

Anticipating | In a week I’m going on a much needed vacation! For three weeks! I can’t quite believe it yet!

Happy Sunday, everyone! What are you reading today?