Ocean Books
The little white lights strung across the façade of Stoke Newington’s Ocean Books are misleading signs of life because at 11am on a Saturday this little bookshop is deserted. Even bookseller Vincent Keys is ponderously quiet, absorbed in that morning’s choice from the shelves. But I always relish the calm for a look over the contemporary fiction (including a sad proliferation of Alexander McCall Smith – but who can escape?), an appealing travel section (furry-cornered Rough Guides and Lonely Planets, of course) and the main event – an extensive art and photography section full of monographs, practical guides and, on one visit, a collection of old Frieze art magazines.
Ocean Books was founded by Keys in 1994, and its ‘back room’, cheerfully advertised by signs all over the shop, has a winning set of £1 fiction shelves and quirky leisure books. Venturing into the back, I find a table holding a cross-sectional display of appropriately diverse wares: a range of lesbian fiction; a biography of DH Lawrence; Penguin’s Ancient Egypt; the enigmatic Reflections: One Man’s Journey from the Beginning of the 21st Century to Its End by Kip Fenn; and Deadmeat, by an author mysteriously known only as ‘Q’. A curious selection, then, but just the sort I delight in coming across.
As I step back into the front of the shop, the peace has evaporated; a string of visitors fill the space and I can hear one like-minded woman outside the door exclaiming, ‘Oh we have to stop here – it’s my favourite one!’
Ocean Books
127 Stoke Newington Church Street
London N16 0UH
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