This is a lovely little book, published by Penguin in 2004. The title says it all -- it is a book about shopping!
At the same time, The Shops is a lively memoir, filled with interesting details from the author's life, and how she came to know various shops. The chapters are divided by kind ("Big Fat Dinners", "Home", "Mothers and Children" and so on). The illustrations are pretty and it also has recommendations and a whole chapter on "Presents", with gift ideas.
The book is full of India Knight's exuberant personality: "I don't want to sound like a fanatical obsessive or loon, but I love my house nearly as much as I love my family". As for home, we may "suffer from a desire to run back towards it or to run away from it". And my personal favorite: "I love paper and [in this stationery] is where the love began. This hushed, sober shop had, obviously, paper by the quire: thin paper, thick paper, hand-made paper, marbled paper in six shades of pink [...]". Being paper-mad myself, I feel my mouth water when I read these lines!
I love India Knight and I try to have all her books, though I don't like them all equally. The Shops is amazing and I fully recommend it! The one negative thing is that it is now slightly outdated, so we don't know which of the shops mentioned still exist.
Write an updated version, please, India Knight!
:-)
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