What are your bookstore rituals? For example, where do you go first in a store?
I am a good browser in that I go all over the place. I am not a category person. I just like good books, whatever their type or genre. So, you could find me almost anywhere, I suppose.
Tell us about your favorite library from when you were a child.
I grew up in a small town in England called Newark-on-Trent. It didn’t have a bookshop or cinema, but it did have an amazing library. It was all glass, like a giant conservatory. I spent many hours in there.
While researching your books, has there ever been a librarian or bookseller who was especially helpful?
There was a great bookseller called Leilah Skelton in Waterstones bookshop in Doncaster. Not only was she incredibly supportive early on in my career (she made knitted objects and jars of peanut butter branded around my books) but also she always had brilliant recommendations.
Do you have a favorite bookstore or library from literature?
Hmmm. I will go with the Cemetery of Lost Books from The Shadow of the Wind.
Do you have a bucket list of bookstores and libraries you’d love to visit but haven’t yet? What’s on it?
I am very lucky to have been to a lot of great ones, but there is one in Maastricht in the Netherlands which looks amazing, and is in an old church.
“Bad books often make very good movies. And vice versa. It is one of life’s mysteries.”
What is the most memorable bookstore or library event you’ve participated in?
Possibly the one I did at Shakespeare and Company in Paris. I slept that night above the shop, and shared a room with the store’s cat and about 10,000 books.
What’s the last thing you checked out from your library or bought at your local bookstore?
Boringly, it was a guidebook to Singapore.
How is your own personal library organized?
Chaotically. (I have ADHD.)
Is the book always better than the movie? Why or why not?
No. I mean, it would take a very radical argument to claim that the novel Jaws is better than the film Jaws. Bad books often make very good movies. And vice versa. It is one of life’s mysteries.
Bookstore cats or bookstore dogs?
Well, cats are more poetic and practical, but I can’t say them or my golden retriever will be cross.
What is your ideal post-bookstore-browsing drink or snack?
Ooh, coffee. Coffee and books are the necessities of life.
Photo of Matt Haig by Ken Laily.
