The back room

Callum Reid has bought the second-hand and rare books since 2011. The back room holds them, and on Saturday it also holds the reading.

( HOW CALLUM BUYS )

How the back room buys

Callum Reid has bought the second-hand and rare books since 2011, the year he and Hanna Moreau opened Shiori Books. The back room is his. A book comes in because he thought it belonged on these shelves, not because a list said it should. Some of what he buys stays for a long time. Some of it is on the table for a week and then goes home with someone who was looking for that exact thing. The room is also where the Saturday reading happens, after the shop day has turned toward evening.

Each find is described as it is. Where the book tells us a year, we print the year. Where it is a first edition, we say so. We do not add a grade we have not got from the book itself. If you want to know more about a particular copy, ask Callum at the counter and he will tell you what he can see.

Second-hand valuation is free, on Thursdays, by appointment. Bring the books in. We buy, or we tell you where a book should go if it is not one for these shelves. A valuation is not a repair. Spine re-backing is £18, and Tomasz Wilk does that work at the bench in this same room, in about 10 working days.

( EIGHT FINDS )

A Pocket Flora of the Lowlands

1962

£14

Collected Sea Poems, first edition

1978

£38

The Northern Kitchen

1985

£9

An Atlas of Old Harbours

1971

£45

Short Walks in the Borders

1990

£6

Letters to a Young Printer

1958

£60

The Glass Orchard, a novel

1983

£8

Lighthouses of the North Sea

1969

£28

Prices in pounds sterling. Ask at the counter on a day we are open and we will hold one.

Thursdays: valuations

By appointment, and free. Phone +44 131 555 0127 or email hello@shioribooks.example and say what you are bringing.

We buy, or we tell you where a book should go.