10 Questions With: Bookhaus

You know the way that some people talk about being loyal to a Nail Tech or a hairdresser? That’s how I feel about bookshops. None more so than Bristol legends, Bookhaus.

As you’ll go on to read Darran, the manager, explain “Bookhaus is a general independent bookshop with radical politics.” Every book you buy there isn’t just a method of hissing at Amazon, it’s a way to support a place that champions and platforms people mindfully.

Nestled alongside Whapping Wharf, I have no favourite Sunday activity than grabbing a coffee from New Cut and then perusing the wonderful selection at Bookhaus.

Always happy to order books in, and often running brilliant and socially motivated talks, if you haven’t already, I recommend that you get yourself down there.

1. You’re stuck on a desert island. What book do you bring?

Without wanting to seem too pretentious, I would take Ulysses by James Joyce. If you are seeking a book that would reward multiple readings, this is it. Also, it might help you to feel less lonely to read a book that is so social and full of life.

2. One book that moved you to tears?

I hosted a launch for How to Fall in Love with the Future by Rob Hopkins a couple of months ago, and it took me by surprise by making me tear up on the bus on the way to work. It is a book about how to get ourselves out of the climate crisis through our creative imagination, and it is filled with a sense of hope and possibility that is too rarely found.

3. One book that made you laugh out loud?

Humour can be a tricky thing to capture in a book, and actually making you laugh out loud is rare in my experience, but one book that did it for me is The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker. It's a novella about the thoughts running through the mind of an ordinary office worker as he travels the escalator in his lunch break. Very funny and very original.

4. What is one author you wish more people knew about?

I think I'll make a local recommendation, because I'm sure there aren’t enough people in Bristol who have heard of him yet. Moses McKenzie is a young black writer from Easton who has published two novels set in Bristol; An Olive Grove in Ends set around Easton in the present day, and Fast by the Horns set in St Pauls in 1980. They are both excellent novels, and really remarkable from such a young author.

5. What is the hardest thing about running a bookshop?

I'm not going to complain about any of it. I've worked as a cleaner, worked 50 and 60 hour weeks in pubs at unsociable hours, in corporate offices under a lot of pressure to perform. In comparison to anything like those I have nothing to whine about.

6. What is the best thing about running a bookshop?

Reading lots of books, discussing books with all sorts of people every day, deciding which books I would like to promote and shout about, hosting authors and discussing their work with them... I love it all!

7. What’s your favourite bookshop in Bristol, other than Bookhaus of course?

I'll go for Small City Books on Church Road in Redfield. They are the closest shop to where I live, it's a lovely bookshop and they are a great addition to the area.

8. What’s the quirkiest or most unexpected title tucked away in your “:weird” section, and what makes it truly weird?

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica is very weird, and is one of the most horrifying books I've ever read. She's part of a new wave of Latin American horror writers. This one is set in a near future in which animal meat has become poisonous, and they have responded by making some human beings into livestock and eating them. It has allegorical connotations about our treatment of animals as meat, as well as brutal Fascist regimes like the many backed by the USA in 20th Century Latin America.

9. What’s the most memorable in-store event (book launch, author talk etc) that you’ve held and why?

I'll highlight one from our beginning in 2021. Alex Wheatle was a Black author who unfortunately passed away in March this year. His life was dramatised in the Small Axe tv series in 2020 in an episode named after him. I reached out to his publicist to invite him to come and do a talk with us for his book Cane Warriors, a children's book about the Maroon rebels in colonial Jamaica. His publicist told me he couldn't do it because he was doing the Cheltenham Book Festival at around the same time. I asked why he couldn't do one with us the day before or after, and he wouldn't budge. I said that I thought that Alex would probably be keen to come and do an event with us in Bristol, where were likely to attract a black audience, and might find it unreasonable to turn us down because he was doing an event in front of a very white, middle class audience in Cheltenham instead (not to cast aspersions on the good people who attend Cheltenham Literature Festival). The publicist didn't accept my argument, so I reached out to Alex directly and it was exactly as I had thought. I contacted a friend who used to run the Malcolm X Centre in St Pauls and asked her if she knew a Jamaican teenager who would be interested in hosting this conversation with Alex Wheatle and we managed to find a young woman who was keen. She hosted the discussion with him, and he was delighted to be interacting with someone who was his ideal reader. He ended up dancing and singing the song they used in the Small Axe TV film about him.

10. What makes Bookhaus what it is?

Bookhaus is a general independent bookshop with radical politics. It isn't just a radical bookshop. I became politicised relatively late in life. As a Geriatric Millennial I spent my teens in the 90's under John Major and Tony Blair, and politics seemed to be dead at that point so I took no interest in it. I was far more interested in music, literature, art, beer and other things before I became very politicised. So, we are a bookshop with something for everyone, across all sorts of genres and categories, which also reflects Bristol's radical culture and spirit. You will find a focus on independent publishers, unique and interesting food and drink books, diverse children's books, black and queer authors, books on nature and the climate crisis, books on Bristol, and an unusually large selection of books on Socialism and Communism.