science

The Bookseller's Tale

The Bookseller's Tale is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Bookseller's Tale rather than just read about it. In short: The Bookseller's Tale is a 2020 autobiographical and historical book written by English bookseller Martin Latham. The book is written in an essay style format, with chapters discussing historical and modern libraries, the history of the bookselling trade and personal stories from Latham's career as a bookseller.

Key takeaways

The Bookseller's Tale belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Bookseller's Tale to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Bookseller's Tale from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Bookseller's Tale is a 2020 autobiographical and historical book written by English bookseller Martin Latham. The book is written in an essay style format, with chapters discussing historical and modern libraries, the history of the bookselling trade and personal stories from Latham's career as a bookseller. The book received positive reviews from The Guardian and The Times Literary Supplement, and was featured in editor's choice lists published by The Standard and The Spectator.

Author and background Bookseller Martin Latham opened the Canterbury branch of Waterstones in 1990, having been selling books for six years prior. Gaining knowledge and interest from interactions with customers, Latham kept conversations with customers going whilst working. Latham had ordered over 35,000 books for the chain, with a month spent assessing publishers in his own time. The founder of Waterstones, Tim Waterstone, visited the store at this time, and described the store as not having "that Aladdin's Cave feeling." The store was also subsequently visited by author Laurie R. King. Latham filed a petty cash claim at the Canterbury chain as part of funding a Roman bath house, visible through glass. Considering bookshops as an "area of refuge", Latham took inspiration from his encounters with customers for The Bookseller's Tale, and English non-fiction writers such as George Orwell and Olivia Laing.

Outline The Bookseller's Tale focuses on Latham's view of book obsession, exploring the history of book stalls, book lice, famous historic and modern ibraries such as the Grand Library of Baghdad and the Laurentian Library. The book also discusses the opening of the Canterbury chain of the bookstore Waterstones and Latham's career as a bookseller. Autobiographic parts of Latham's life are also discussed, such as his father's book collecting, which is attributed to his abandonment by his parents as a child.

Reception Katy Guest of The Guardian described it as "a celebration of all things bookish" and assured that book-enjoyers would "come away with something unexpected" and "reassuring". Writing for The Times Literary Supplement, Dennis Duncan referred to the book as a "series of garrulous sorties around certain bookish themes", describe Latham's tone as "not too careful about facts", however felt the style was "humane". Duncan also acknowledged the separation between "highbrow and lowbrow literature", highlighting the example used by Latham of novelist A. S. Byatt not wanting to be seen buying Discworld in London. Pittenweem Community Library recommended the book, praising the commentary on book smuggling to avoid censorship and coverage on Scottish historian Andrew Pettegree. Alanna Jenkins criticised the book for "feeling cold at times", attributing it to reading like a "textbook". Jenkins also expressed disappointment with the lack of personal story provided by Latham, calling the book a "reluctant memoir". Terry Potter of The Letterpress Project praised the historical discussion on booksellers of the Seine embankment and the book stores that used to trade on Book Row in New York City. Similar to Jenkins however, Potter equated the book to a "set of essays", rather than a "tale" and described the style as "lacking fizz", however said that due to the book not requiring cover to cover reading, the book would "have something for every reader to enjoy and get involved in." Ross Bradshaw of the Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham referred to the book as "cool and modern", referencing the inclusion of philosophers Mikhail Bakhtin and Walter Benjamin. Despite this, Bradshaw did note a historical error regarding Leon Kramer, which states in the book that he "founded the world’s first Yiddish newspaper” from his bookshop", when by this time Forverts already had a print circulation of 120,000. The Bibliophibian commented on the muddling of the book, saying it was a mixture of history book and autobiography, whilst focusing too much on the physical "codex" of books rather than their contents. The Bookseller's Tale was featured in The London Standard's "Best books of 2020" editor's choice list, with Katie Law describing the book as a "love letter", with anecdotes presented to demonstrate the emotional and physical "power of books". The Spectator also included the book on their 2020 reviewer's choice list.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Bookseller's Tale

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Bookseller's Tale claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Bookseller's Tale before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Bookseller's Tale ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Bookseller's Tale

In research: The Bookseller's Tale appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Bookseller's Tale in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Bookseller's Tale is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2020 British novels, 2020 non-fiction books, 21st-century history books, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Bookseller's Tale outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Bookseller's Tale in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Bookseller's Tale means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Bookseller's Tale out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Bookseller's Tale in simple terms?

Why does The Bookseller's Tale matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Bookseller's Tale?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Bookseller's Tale.