Aardvark Books and Cafe: From Wholesaler Dreams to a Literary Haven in Herefordshire

Have you ever wondered how a whimsical idea could transform into a vibrant literary hub? Join me as I chat with Sheridan Swinson, owner of Aardvark Books and Cafe in Herefordshire, UK. Sheridan takes us through his serendipitous journey from an initial plan of being a book wholesaler to becoming an adored independent bookshop, complete with a café and live music events. Discover the art of adaptability and the unwavering community support that turned Aardvark Books into a cherished gem nestled in the picturesque Welsh Marches.

Sheridan explores the philosophy behind Aardvark Books, emphasizing the joy of letting readers discover books organically. He shares delightful stories from the Ludlow Food Festival and memorable encounters with foodwriters like Mary Berry and Antonio Carluccio. 

We discuss the significance of carrying books in various languages and their impact on cultural preservation, especially for immigrants and refugees. Sheridan and I delve into the beauty and pace of translated literature and why we enjoyed specific books. Expect humorous anecdotes, insightful reflections on business psychology and economics, and a celebration of the dynamic world of books. Tune in to experience the quirks, joys, and powerful connections fostered by a love for literature.

Enjoy!
Mandy

Aardvark Books and Cafe

The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, Graham Robb

The Man Who Planted Trees, Jean Giono

Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars, Francesca Wade

Siena: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval City, Jane Stevenson

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson-Beverly and I'm a bibliophile. Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast. We believe in exceptional writing, stories that educate, ruminate, elevate and celebrate A hub where book lovers discover their next favorite read and connect with a vibrant literary community. Each week, I present interviews with authors, independent bookshop owners and booksellers from around the globe and publishing professionals. When I started this podcast in 2020, my intention was to support indie bookshops and authors and to produce a quality podcast where listeners gain insight to authors' lives and their writing style and chat with booksellers about what they're reading.

Speaker 1: 0:55

I chose a format that is enjoyable for me, my guests and my listeners a show without interruptions from advertisers, cutting into conversations. A show without interruptions from advertisers, cutting into conversations With the millions of podcasts out there. Thank you for choosing to listen to the Bookshop Podcast. You clicked on today's episode. I'm here. You're here, my guest is here. All thanks to my team and emails back and forth researching guests, creating meaningful questions, recording interviews, audio edits, final edits, producing the show and uploading it to Buzzsprout, where it magically appears on podcast platforms globally. It took days of work and a team of professionals to bring you this episode.

Speaker 1: 1:37

I support creativity that is not marred by conformity, and I'm asking you to do the same To financially support this show. Please go to thebookshoppodcastcom. Click on Support the Show and you can donate through. Buy Me a Coffee To help the show reach more people. Please share episodes with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. Okay, let's get on with the show. You're listening to episode 254. Nestling in a magical circle of hills in the Welsh marches and housed in 19th century former granaries, aardvark Books is an Aladdin's cave of new, secondhand and rare books, cds, maps, musical scores, dvds, greeting cards, gifts and much more. Inside you will discover books on every conceivable subject, from Aardvarks to ZZ Top, online and in the bookshop. Aardvark Books and Cafe is owned by Sheridan and Sarah Swinson. Hi, sheridan, and welcome to the show. It's great to have you here.

Speaker 2: 2:51

Thank you very much. It's pleasing to be here, even if a month late.

Speaker 1: 2:55

Yeah well, scheduling can be a little tricky when you're on different parts of the planet.

Speaker 2: 3:00

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:00

You live in a beautiful part of the UK which is Herefordshire.

Speaker 2: 3:04

It is. I mean Herefordshire is very pastoral, rolling countryside, low density of population, little market towns. I say to people it's surprisingly welcoming to people in groups that one might think it wouldn't be welcoming to. I mean there's a big gay and lesbian community. There are all sorts of people. Back in the 70s a lot of artistic and people who wanted to live a different kind of life moved out here and that kind of seeded the ground. You know we have opera directors, authors, you know all sorts of creative people found their way here.

Speaker 1: 3:53

It sounds bohemian and a great place to live.

Speaker 2: 3:56

It is. It's a bohemian crowd. Obviously, we're not far from Brecon, which has Rachel Podger and the Brecon Baroque Bohemian Crowd, and people also have a great sense of even if what someone's doing isn't your bag, you let them get on and do it. So it's got a kind of a live and let live-ness to it, which I like.

Speaker 1: 4:17

Now let's learn about you and your life in publishing, co-founding Aardvark Books with the late Edward Tobin, and the transition from online sales to a brick and mortar store.

Speaker 2: 4:28

The thing is, I don't want you to think that in any sense this was planned. Everything we've done it's been a result of happy accidents, because originally we set up to be book wholes wholesalers and then we realized, having done that, that we didn't have enough money to be book wholesalers, and so we we had to kind of change, change plan. Uh, I say edward was even more hopeless with money than I am, and I'm pretty hopeless with money. So how we're here 20 years on? I well, I know exactly why we're here. Basically, I married Sarah, who's extremely good with money, and she took over the finances, and that is entirely why we are still here. So we kind of moved around a bit and then, uh started to sell online and that went quite well. And then we moved into this building and we thought, well, it's a nice building, someone might want to come and see us. So we just thought, well, we'll open up. And then, uh, people did come and see us. And then people next door opened a cafe and then they closed it. And then people said, oh, I really like the cafe, so we have the cafe, even though we had no planning to open the cafe.

Speaker 2: 5:48

It's an entirely accidental development and everything we've done has come about because of either edward's enthusiasm or my enthusiasm or sarah's enthusiasm. We just thought, well, that would be nice if we did. X. I mean about three or four years into doing live music. I turned on the radio one morning and it said from today, you no longer have to get a license to have live music in your premises, like we've been doing it for four years. I had no idea you needed a license to. When we started the cafe, I didn't know you needed a license for planning for cafe. And somebody reported us. And between when they reported us and when the inspector came out, they changed the law to enable bookshops to have cafes, small cafes. So he came out and said oh well, we would have closed you down, but under this new regulation you're allowed a cafe. So that was completely luck, happenstance, you know, I, I started the business in um, my friend helen's pig sheds, or they had been pig sheds.

Speaker 2: 6:54

They weren't still pig sheds when we, uh, when we had them I I don't want to emphasize that, um. And then we outgrew the pig sheds and I was talking to a friend and said, oh, we need a building. And she said well, you should come to Brampton Bryan because I've got a building in Brampton Bryan and the Harleys. They have buildings and if they like you they'll accommodate you.

Speaker 2: 7:13

And that's kind of how we landed up in Brampton Bryan, which is a sort of magical little village, and our landlord is now the Lord Lieutenant of the County. He was now the uh lord lieutenant of the county. He's very. He was at the royal wedding, he was at the royal funeral. So he's our landlord and, uh, they've been incredibly uh supportive. They they've been here for 700 years. So it's, it's all happy accident. There is nothing I could tell you that it was all a plan and that edward and I had a plan and that we don't. But that would be a complete lie. Edward couldn't plan his way out of a paper bag oh my goodness he was a lovely, lovely guy but he was completely chaotic.

Speaker 2: 8:00

Um, I had everything except travel plans. He would always arrive at the airport like five hours early. He lied to me about when the plane was and we'd be sat there and I'd say, how am we going for the plane now? And he goes. Well, actually it's not for another three hours, but other than that, other than that, he was completely hopeless. But, um, god love him, we miss him so much.

Speaker 2: 8:21

It's 10 years since he left us and even the way he left us was so, edward, that he'd been house or dog sitting for a neighbor here and was meant to pick her up from the station and didn't.

Speaker 2: 8:34

And I went in, I found him and he just opened a beer and he had the paper on his knee and he, just like he just done that, put the beer down, folded the paper to see what was on TV, and he, just like he just done that, put the beer down, folded the paper to see what was on tv and he'd gone. You know, that was just such an edward way of such an edward way of going, really. But, uh, he left us a great human legacy which I hope we've lived up to, because he would. He would befriend anybody, he would, from from the greatest to the lowest. I mean he had an endless. I mean it's a cliche to say Irish people have lots of stories, but Irish people have lots of stories and Edward had more than anybody. The Irish Times printed a really good obituary on him, which is probably still online, but that left out more than it included.

Speaker 1: 9:24

And yeah, he was special very special and it's such a gift to be able to work with a friend, a best friend.

Speaker 2: 9:32

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 9:32

It sounds like serendipity has been with you every step of the way.

Speaker 2: 9:37

Yeah, I think it has. I think we've been very lucky. I mean 20 years when, I think of all the bookshops and book companies were around when we started and aren't around anymore. It's kind of amazing that this crazy little bookshop well, crazy large bookshop in the middle of nowhere we're still trucking. It is sort of incredible to me, but we met the people we needed to meet when we needed to meet them and we had a lot of help.

Speaker 1: 10:06

Can you tell me a little about the history of the barn where Aardvark is located? It's such a gorgeous old building.

Speaker 2: 10:14

It's a gorgeous building. I mean, the thing about this barn is that the Harleys who still own it, as I was saying, they were a very prominent family. They were the, the elves of Oxford. After the De Vere family died out, they became the new elves of Oxford and they owned Harley Street and Wigmore Street and you know, and and they their estate. I mean they had several estates, but this one was like a show estate. So the buildings that they put up are all fantastic. I mean there's a, a barn down the road from here which they put up. It's got a broken pediment, it's got like a greek temple front and it's just a flipping barn. So all the buildings, I mean all the manor houses on the estate, they're all extraordinary. In the park they put up a french cottage, I mean you know so. So everything that they touched, um, they did with a degree of style. The second, all his library ended up basically as the foundation of the british library. It's a thing called the harleyana and that is the core of the of the foundation of the british library. So you know, uh, byron came here, had a fair with the, the, the earl's wife or the second earl's wife and the second old daughter. So in honor of that, um, our dog is called byron and he is just as interested in Moore as his name saying.

Speaker 2: 11:47

So yeah, it's a special building. It was put up in the middle of the 19th century. When we came into it it wasn't completely derelict because the roof was fine, but the doors and things and everything else. There was one big machine in here which I used to call the Glopida Glopida machine after how to Murder your Wife which they used for grinding cattle feed, and that was all that was left in this huge 4,000 square foot building and they moved out and it became a temple to. We don't have a broken pediment, but in its own way it's a temple to books. So yeah, so yeah, it's just, but it is special and we're actually three buildings, but basically it's three barns together. So there's a barn with children's books in a barn we use as warehouse and for exhibitions, and then the main barn. So it's it's three barns together, basically it sounds wonderful.

Speaker 1: 12:41

You mentioned earlier that it's kind of in the middle of nowhere. Are you near a village or a town?

Speaker 2: 12:46

So we're on the edge of a village. There's an A road that goes through, which goes into the middle Wales. So something I discovered after we landed up here is that lots and lots of bike riders and vintage car people drive this road because they like driving into wales because, a the roads much better and b you know, they're switchy, tight roads with mountains. So we got a lot of cyclists who are on one of the routes for landslides to john o'groats. So, once you know, from east onwards, virtually every day there are cyclists, motorcyclists, vintage cars, and I had no idea. Again, just luck, happenstance, it looks like we're in the middle of nowhere, but actually we're not really. In an odd kind of way, yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:35

You were talking about. It's a great bicycling area and that made me think about the author John McGregor, because he does his book tours around the UK on his bicycle. Have you ever had John do a book event at Aardvark?

Speaker 2: 13:49

Sadly, we've never had him but we ought to because he would fit right in. There's a guy called Graham Robb who wrote some fantastic books and he travels around on a bicycle. He wrote a book called the Discovery of France, which is a fantastic book, but no, we get motorcycles. Last weekend we had the MG Club, so we had like 20 MGs outside and, yeah, we've had tractor rallies. See, most bookshops do not have tractor rallies and they are really missing out.

Speaker 1: 14:25

Yeah, you're definitely the first independent bookshop I've heard of that has tractor rallies.

Speaker 2: 14:31

You know, it's a whole different crowd and it's funny because we do a lot of events here but some of them are book events but most of them aren't book events. I have a sort of philosophy that in a way I don't really like encouraging people to buy particular books. I kind of like to have lots of books I love and then let people get on with it. So we do author events and we do all sorts of stuff, but in fact we do more music and art events than we do author events.

Speaker 1: 15:06

That was actually one of the things that drew me into inviting you onto the show. I was taken with everything that you do within the community and for the community. Particularly the car boot sales. They look like a lot of fun.

Speaker 2: 15:19

Basically, I love France. I love going to France. Sarah and I, you know, we had lots of holidays in france, and one of the best things about going on holiday in france in the summer is they have these things called the greniers, where everybody comes out and, uh, they have stalls and they have like places to eat food and a bar where you can get a glass of plonk for a euro and and it's just so great and they usually have a kind of umpire band and, you know, it's just a lot of fun. And I sort of came back here and I thought, yeah, I want to do this, I want a bit of that. So so we sort of started it and, uh, then when the pandemic came, because we had used the barn, so they had all been inside or under tents, but when the pandemic came, I thought, well, we can't do that anymore because it's too risky. But if people were outside, um, it wouldn't be so risky. So we moved from being kind of indoor flea markets to being outdoor car boots and that we sort of kept that because people can have more space.

Speaker 2: 16:26

It's quite fraught that's the only thing I would say because everybody turns up earlier and earlier and earlier. So like we get here at like 20 to 7, by which time like 10 people have already set up the first buyers are arriving. You know it's like what are you doing? It's like we're meant to open at nine and it's like buyers are turning up at quarter past seven. So it's it's.

Speaker 2: 16:47

It is fraught. Um, you have to sort the parking out. Mostly people are fine, but every so often people do exceptionally dumb stuff and by the time you get to two o'clock you've been up since like four and you're just. You know you're propping your eyelids open by that point. But but it brings everybody out, from the highest to the lowest. Everybody comes out, everybody wants to bargain and people bring produce, people bring all sorts of stuff, plants as well as bric-a-brac and vintage and there are a lot of actual dealers and then a lot of dealers come to see what's here and the whole thing. It's sort of crazy, but they're really, really popular. People love them. We get, you know, between 300 or 400 up to 700 or 800 people.

Speaker 1: 17:36

And are these events held year round?

Speaker 2: 17:38

We do a lot over the summer and then we kind of stop in October and we give ourselves a rest. We have like an indoor Christmas market September. We have all sorts of other things going on, like we're the bookseller at Ludlow Food Festival and that's their 30th anniversary, so it's really important. We've been, we've been doing the books there for more than 15 years and uh, so that that's a really big thing. They've got some big names coming for that and that will be, uh, really exciting. And over the years we've met all sorts of food writers. I mean, I'm a greedy man and I love food and I love talking to people who make food. I mean, what would be bad about that? You know, we've had the Hairy Bikers, we've had all sorts of people. Mary Berry, Mary Berry very cool, love Mary Berry.

Speaker 1: 18:26

I'm guessing she's a real gem.

Speaker 2: 18:28

She's everything you would expect, so professional. She signed like, not just books we had, she signed whatever people brought up. People brought up Mary Berry books from the 1970s. She signed them. I mean the queue was like from here to wherever. I mean it was amazing. I mean she's tiny, she just kept going. Let people take selfies. Classy, classy, classy person. We did Antonio Carluccio, he was amazing. The late Antonio Carluccio, he was fantastic. Everybody wanted to give him alcohol samples by the time he got to his demo. The poor guy could barely stand.

Speaker 1: 19:04

Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 2: 19:05

Because everybody was like try this, antonio, try this, this is a wine from here a wife from there.

Speaker 1: 19:11

They sound like fun events.

Speaker 2: 19:13

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:13

Getting back to the store, you sell new, secondhand and rare books, right?

Speaker 2: 19:19

We do, we do. I stole the idea from Dawn's. So you know, there's that thing about other people borrow, genius steals, or it could be the other way around. So James Dawn had a really good idea. So he mixed secondhand and new together, and not at the front of the store but in the, in the sections, and I thought this is brilliant. Why doesn't everybody do this? Because you know, if you're interested in art, you don't care if it's a. You know, if you want a book on gil, on deo, you want to see as many books on gilondeo as you can. As you can not like, oh, let's put the new ones here and the second hand ones there, in case they get together and make whoopies. So you know, it was just such a brilliant idea and I thought why does nobody have this idea? So I stole it from him. So, james dawn, I'm very, I stole your idea and it works fantastically well.

Speaker 1: 20:11

And is the store curated so that on the shelves the newer books are side by side with the second hand books?

Speaker 2: 20:19

Yeah, yeah, it could be 100, 200 year old book. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean the absolute rare stuff we we put to one side. But yeah, but yeah, we put it all together.

Speaker 1: 20:31

Yeah, I really like that idea of curating new and used books together. There's quite a few bookshops that do it here in the States. Santa Cruz Bookshop is one. Yeah, it just makes it easier to find the book and decide if you want to buy it used or new.

Speaker 2: 20:48

I like books to roam free. I like customers to roam free. I like customers to roam free. I like books to roam free. And I mean I love books and I think people who love books we don't.

Speaker 2: 21:01

You know it's a stupid classification and it's there, I think, for economic reasons, not for cultural reasons, and you know, people eventually get used to it. It makes pricing a bit more complicated because we say, well, if it's new it's half price and if it's secondhand there's a number in it. And you know people go is it a code? Is this a code? And I say no, it's three pounds. If it's got three in it, it's three pounds. It's not a code. People, it's three pounds. If it's got three in it, it's three pounds. It's not a code. People always think it's some arcane code. I don't know why, but it's like it is funny, it makes me laugh. And then some people get very, because I put a number and then I put a circle around it and that way I know it's my price. So if something comes that I haven't priced has got an old price, I know it's nothing that I've done. So if it's got a number and a circle, that's my price.

Speaker 1: 21:51

Well, everyone will know that now, because you said it on the podcast.

Speaker 2: 21:55

I have. I've said it on the podcast. Yeah, so if you get a book with a number and a circle that's come through on Vought Books, it's one of the hundreds of thousands of books which have come through here and gone out into the world, you know, like birds.

Speaker 1: 22:10

With Sarah's background as a French teacher, does the bookshop carry a selection of books in languages other than English?

Speaker 2: 22:18

Lots, lots of people have fiction, but we've got a whole big foreign history section in particularly German, french, spanish, italian those would be the main languages, the old Russian, the old Scandinavian book. But yeah, we've got a foreign language theology, foreign language history, foreign language art, and then we've also got a lot of foreign language fiction. And we get you know. You never know who'll turn up and you never know what people will be looking for. So, yeah, I like it. Whether it makes financial sense or not, I have no idea.

Speaker 1: 22:52

I think with refugees, asylum seekers and people immigrating from different countries, it is more important now than ever to have books on bookshelves in bookshops and in libraries and school libraries that reflect people from all over the world. Children especially need to see themselves reflected on bookshelves.

Speaker 2: 23:13

Yes, a lot of people from different European countries come here and a lot of children from abroad come here, a lot of Dutch people. Language teaching in Britain is in a really, really, really bad phase and we don't have time to go into it. But schools are closing german departments. A young girl who works for us on a saturday they've just decided to stop doing spanish gcse, which is our, our 16 year old qualification. Universities are closing german departments and french departments. It's as if we've decided that we don't want to speak foreign languages. We don't want that horrible, nasty foreign culture. You know that we've taken back control Oops, I did not say that. And you know we want to cut ourselves off.

Speaker 2: 23:58

And one of the great things about the book trade, both in terms of bookshops and publishing, it's a glorious cacophony. I mean, I've been to look to, uh, the frankfurt book every year for well, more, well, more than 20 years and you know, I love it, I love, I love the whole thing, the madness of it, every language. I love the kids dressed up in manga costumes. Um, I'd say, one year after a really awful uh, terrorist, uh thing, there was really really heavy security and we went in and they kind of took everything out of my bag and they took everything out of Sarah's bag and they kind of patted us down and they did the whole thing. And then next to me came up this guy with an enormous metal double-sided axe, with a helmet with wings on it and they went through, you go. And so they waved him through.

Speaker 2: 24:56

Having got all my kind of underwear out for public display there was four, four with this huge double-headed axe, he was allowed to wander, wander past us. So yeah, I love, I love all that and long may all the all languages. And I wish actually that there was more translating of foreign non-genre translated into English. And everybody read Umberto Eco, everybody read so many of those, so many of those writers and books like Periodic Table, and they talked about them and now it just seems to be cut off from that, except in genre fiction. We have lots of Scandinavian murder books, which is fine, but it would be nice to have some stuff from abroad where people don't get killed.

Speaker 1: 26:00

It's interesting that you say that, because I love books in translation. There's something about the measure, the cadence, the lilt of the words and the sentences, the phrasing. We learn so much about authors through reading these translated books. We learn about the soul of the countries where they're from. I tend to use the little book Days in the Murasaki Bookshop as a really good example of this.

Speaker 2: 26:26

It sold lots and lots of copies.

Speaker 1: 26:28

Yes, worldwide. What made Days in the Murasaki Bookshop a wonderful story for me was because it was about everyday life, about relationships. It was gentle, it was as if the author was sharing a memory. When I read a translated book, it's like it's awakening something in me. I just love them so much yeah, no, you're, you're absolutely right.

Speaker 2: 26:54

I mean this book which you probably know, uh, the man who planted trees. I mean that, again, slim book. But you read it and it just, um, it reorders your brain and and that's what art can do. I mean something I find extraordinary is culture seems to be under such an attack from both left and right.

Speaker 2: 27:17

The situation in america may be different, but analogous. You know, and I read about people, you know courses here where jane austen is. Um, you know, there are trigger warnings on jane austen, you know, and I think there's a fundamental mistake, which is to think that art is somehow bloodless and safe. Art is not bloodless and safe. I mean, when I was at secondary school, one afternoon they decided to show us who's afraid of Virginia Woolf and I have to say, I came out, I could barely speak. You know, I was completely triggered, I was slightly traumatized. I'd never seen that, never seen anything like that. But that is what great art can do. You know, that is, and you know it's that portrait of a marriage. I, you know, I just about managed to get myself a girlfriend, but I definitely hadn't been in a long and stale marriage by that point age 17, but you know what you know people need to stop thinking that culture is safe. Culture can can affect you, and that is the whole point. It's not not a placebo. Its culture is not a placebo. It's meant to be affecting and that's what it's there for.

Speaker 2: 28:36

Bookstores are places where ideas can, and we have so many customer discussions here and there's that old thing like, don't talk about politics or religion or whatever, and we talk about all that stuff here and we have disagreements. That stuff, yeah, and, and we have disagreements. I have, you know. I mean I have my views, they have their views. Some of the customers I love most have views which are completely different from mine, and it doesn't, it doesn't matter, because you know we mustn't live in silos. Ideas need to get out and party occasionally, otherwise, you know what is the point.

Speaker 1: 29:12

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. You carry two things in your bookshop apart from all of the books that I love maps and musical scores. Are these rare items, and do you have a favorite map?

Speaker 2: 29:27

The scores in the main are not rare. I mean I've had occasional signed you know Morton Feldman signed scores and I have had the occasional one. Maps yeah, I've had a lot of rare maps slightly less now than a few years back but I still have, you know, speeds and Saxton holes. And one of my favorite groups of maps are maps that were made for Drayton's polyolbian. They're like, they're personified maps. So like every hill and every river has a is done as a person, they're amazing. I mean Michael Drayton I'm a huge Michael Drayton fan because of the the Shakespeare connection and there's one legend that Drayton and Johnson were with Shakespeare when the night that he got sick and died. So I mean they were contemporaries in Warwickshire. And Polyolbian is a huge mythological poem about Britain and it's illustrated by these amazing personified maps. So I love those. Still got quite a few of those.

Speaker 2: 30:32

I love what we call strip maps, which were the maps, the first maps, which showed roads on them, the Ogilby map. So I love those. But my all-time favourite was a map of Shropshire by a man called Boar, b-a-u-g-h-h, and that is such an important map. It's from 1808. He won a royal medal for it and one of the reasons it's important is it shows because shropshire is, it was the the cradle of the industrial revolution. Okay, so it had foundries and quarries and places for um uh, for making coke and all that kind of stuff and a lot of those. We only know their locations from the Boar Map. So the Boar Map is a really, really important historical document. And then I love the Fluid Map of Wales. Really early maps, 16th century map Went through many, many different versions. I like the slightly later ones with more sea monsters. I love sea monsters on maps I do too.

Speaker 1: 31:34

I've seen them in florence so great.

Speaker 2: 31:37

I actually the the ashmolean did a book just of sea monsters in maps, which I thought this I said to the guy. I said, like you know, I am your customer for this book. I have no idea who else is going to buy this book, but yeah, I, I am somebody who loves the sea monster on a map and I feel cheated if there isn't one. So I love humphrey fluid, key figure in the uh, the welsh renaissance, in 16th century welsh renaissance. You know he, he went to um holland, he studied under ortelius. You know he did it really in a very modern way. It's like who's the best mapmaker, ortelius? I'll go, I'll learn how to make maps, I'll come back.

Speaker 2: 32:15

You think I mean making a map of Wales now would be really really difficult. But then in the 16th century with no decent roads, that's 100 years before Macadam roads. So let alone Tar Macadam, that's let alone tarmacadam. That's a that's. You know they were dirt roads. Wales is full of hills and mountains and he made a map. It's just, it's brilliant. And he did it before the english made a map. So there you go.

Speaker 1: 32:39

So love maps yes, I can tell. Okay, I love to hike. So while we're on the subject of maps and roads for anyone traveling in the Bucknell, herefordshire area, what historical sites, hiking trails, restaurants and other indie shops do you suggest they visit?

Speaker 2: 32:58

Well, you are like a mile or two from Offa's Dyke, which is like the most important walking route in Britain, so that's like two miles that way. Then, through the village, the Herefordshire Trail goes, which is a really long and important walk. So, yeah, there's lots of footpaths. You can walk down the team to Lentwood Iron, have a drink or two in the pub and stagger your way backwards if you wish to. Yeah, there's a lot of walkers. We're not far from the Long Nind and the Stretton Hills, which is somewhere that people have come on holiday to walk for 200 years. So this is walker's paradise, cyclist's paradise. In terms of independent shops, well, in the village we've got a lot of independent makers. We've got a jeweler. We've got one of the most talented uh, most nationally recognized young potters, who's a woman called isatu hide. Last summer she had the main uh, sometimes pottery show and it was completely sellout. She didn't have to pick up a single pot, she sold every pot. How do?

Speaker 1: 34:06

How do you spell her name?

Speaker 2: 34:07

I-S-A-T-U-H-Y-D-E. She's a phenomenal, phenomenal potter and I miss her. She got a bursary to go back to her father's country, which is Sierra Leone, to learn about African pot making. So she's off doing that at the moment Because normally she comes in twice a week with a gorgeous, um young, uh young child and uh, she's great and amazing, amazing pots, because she works really in a in like a uh, japanese, korean style with quite uh cool lines and cool colors. So I'm just really intrigued to see what, what she'll do, having come back from africa, which is such a different um pottery tradition. So she's great. There's a young artist called alice savory. She's got a shop and studio here, like 100 yards up the road. So, yeah, there's lots of creative people. Opposite there's a guy who restores old bookbinding and printing equipment. As I said to you, there's lots of creative people in this area. If you were to fire an arrow, you'd be unlucky not to hit a creative person in this area. Really, it's special.

Speaker 1: 35:24

It sounds like my kind of place and, from the photos I've seen, it's absolutely stunning. Sheridan, with your history in publishing, are there any areas, genres, topics that you feel are currently neglected in the publishing industry? We've talked about translated books, but I'm wondering if there's any other area you'd like to see given more attention.

Speaker 2: 35:46

Can I first say I think there are areas which are overpublished. So anybody who's going on a journey, it's like I've got this new book idea. I'm going to go on a journey to find the real SpongeBob SquarePants Okay, and it's about SpongeBob, but it's also about me and my problems with getting adequate trousers, and you know it's a personal journey. So no more books like that. We've had enough journeys. Also, we need to lock up all our copies of Walden. So the word, like you know, x is the new Theroux. That needs to be banned from now on.

Speaker 2: 36:24

One, roger Deakin. I love Roger Deakin. Wonderful, wonderful books. He's great. There's a new biography on him that's just come out Lovely. We don't need more people doing that. So that's the first thing.

Speaker 2: 36:35

In terms of areas which are undercover, weirdly I'm going to say something which you would not expect at all, which is that I think there's a really interesting area which is a confluence between business psychology and economics, business psychology and economics and I think that if I was starting a publishing company today, I'd be thinking in that area. I mean, kogan Page used to do a lot of stuff years ago and obviously there have been individual bestsellers, the Freakonomics books and things like that, but practical uses of economics. I mean, I learned so much from those Freakonomics books that they've got one uh example they quote of a nursery which started to bring in a charge for late pickups and the problem got five times worse because they'd replaced the moral imperative with a financial, a financial charge, and so people were like thinking like, well, I only have to pay 10 bucks, this is really cheap, this is cheap child care for an hour, you know. So they've gone from people feeling guilty to, oh, I'll just pay 10 bucks, and so like, when you're setting prices for things. I mean, when we started to do our, our markets originally, I am so not clued up financially and I was like originally it was like come, we won't charge you anything, you know, just come along. So then people would just like not turn up. So then I thought, well, I'll make it five pounds, and then they still wouldn't turn up because, like, it's only five pounds, so you have to charge people enough so that they actually turn up. And it's not actually about the money, it's about the buy-in. So I learned that from from free economics.

Speaker 2: 38:09

So I think there is an area there, you know, where you know you're in, particularly with all the digital changes and the changes in the world we're living and the moving into into a world which is AI dominated.

Speaker 2: 38:22

But you know, we are still humans and, uh, the way we think and the way we think about things is still very story driven, and I think you know, actually, um, the genius of people like Michael Lewis is to be able to tell very complicated stories in a way that is compelling, even though there's lots of detail and it's and it's difficult to understand. So I think, you know, I'd like to see books with, like you know, the five things you need to know to be a successful entrepreneur, or something. Those are boring, that's, that's like, because there's never five things, and if you could learn to be a successful entrepreneur by reading one flipping book, then the world would be full of we all would be so that it's just rubbish, but, on the other hand, interesting psychological and economic lessons. We can all, we can all get more of that stuff. So that would be somewhere that I would say have a. Have a look there, you. There's probably more gold to be mined there than you think.

Speaker 1: 39:17

You raise an excellent point. I have found myself being drawn to nonfiction books that are written in the style of narrative nonfiction Because, as you said, we relate to stories. I'm not good with money either, and figures, all that stuff. It just goes way over my head either. And figures, all that stuff, it just goes way over my head. However, I love stories and if facts can be explained to me through a story, I get it. I understand it. I think you need to consider opening up your own publishing company there towards financial narrative nonfiction.

Speaker 2: 39:52

No, no, I'm still trying to finish my book. I started some years back a book which is called Tall Tales from the Village Bookshop. So when I finally finish it, it's like James Herriot on mescaline it does have animals, but all the crazy things that happen in a bookstore, which are many and various. But when you own a bookstore, as probably people have said to you, people assume that you have absorbed everything in the store and you can tell. I mean I had a guy come in once. It's like I've got a problem with my fish and I said, okay, so what should I? My fish keep dying, what should I do? And I'm thinking well, I know two things about fish. One is oxygen. You know it's your tank aerator. We have this long fish discussion. I think what the hell is going on? I mean I don't keep fish. I don't know anybody who keeps fish, but I keep a bug soul, so I must know about fish.

Speaker 2: 40:52

And Sarah had a guy who came up and said, um, can you recommend a good bed and breakfast in barmouth? I mean this was this is not like in a conversation, this is like. He came up to her and said apropos of nothing at all, can you recommend a good. A good because, again, you know you run a bookstore. You've got to know all the good. Um, even though barmouth is like a long way away from here, it's on the welsh coast. You've got to know because you good, even though Barmouth is like a long way away from here, it's on the Welsh coast. You've got to know because you're running a bookstore.

Speaker 1: 41:20

You have a favorite story you can share with us?

Speaker 2: 41:23

One of my favorites is the guy who spent an hour and a half here and when he came up to me and he said with a big smile, he said I haven't bought a book, but I have used your toilet. I haven't bought a book, but I have used your toilet. People are wacky. I mean that's why I love being a bookseller. You've got to. I mean, loving books is important, but you really have to love people and ultimately it's the stories you get. It's not just the stories on the shelves, it's the stories that come in on legs.

Speaker 1: 41:56

Two-legged and four. They're all wonderful.

Speaker 2: 42:00

Two legs and four. Yeah well, we just limited dogs. We had a dog incident and I still can't believe that somebody allowed their dog to do that. So dogs can now only be in the main room, so we're not letting them any further. But I love dogs and Byron is now a fixture of the shop and he's so clever I mean the way he gets attention. There was a couple who came in. He goes up to the wife, he looks up at her, she stokes him for 45 minutes. They go. Another couple sit in the same place. He goes up to the woman, he does the same place. He goes up to the woman, he does the same thing. He's got like an hour and a half of quality attention. I think he thinks he's the cat.

Speaker 1: 42:44

Oh my goodness, that's adorable. Okay, what are you currently reading?

Speaker 2: 42:49

Well, I'm currently reading a book called Square Haunting by Francesca Wade. It's five biographies of women. I picked it up because the first one is a biography of HD, the poet Hilda Doolittle, and Hilda Doolittle is on the edge of lots of stories, like Ezra Pound and Elliot, and she's a name that comes up but I thought, well, I don't really know anything about Hilda doodle, so, and boy, is that an interesting story. Basically, it's five women who all lived in meckleborough square. So you've got dorothy el sayers I've just finished the eileen power chapter jane harrison, and then the last one that I'm about to start is on virginia wolf, who lived in meckleborough square for about a year. So that's great and I really, really recommend it. And hd really interesting woman, I have to say. She was married to richard aldington, who was obviously an important poet. Biography of t lawrence terrible, terrible, terrible husband. I mean you have to say he was not good. I mean I think the first world war everybody went a bit loopy-doopy, but even so, I think you have to say she had a bad time with him, but anyway. But yeah, the Dorothy L Sayers, that stuff I didn't know.

Speaker 2: 44:04

So, reading that, the book I last read, which is out of print and somebody must bring it back into print is called Picasso and Co by Brassai. It's a wonderful, wonderful book about the years that Brassai spent trying to photograph Picasso's sculptures, because he got this contract to photograph Picasso's sculptures and he would turn up and Picasso would go I'm not in the mood for it or he'd have a party or there would be you know. So it's about Picasso, it's about his circle of Cocteau and Elwha and you know, and Dora Maar, it's amazing, amazing Brass Eye, wonderful writer. Obviously he did Parents by Night, amazing photographer, but just such an interesting book and I just finished that I've just lent it to a friend of mine who's an artist. And then I'm reading a book on Sienna by somebody. I wrote this down because I can't remember her name. She's called Jane Stevenson. Obviously everybody knows about Florence, but Siena, you know, I've been to Siena but I didn't know about the history of Siena, which is really different from the history of Florence Published by Head of Zeus, really, really interesting book.

Speaker 2: 45:11

So I've always got lots and lots of books on the go. If I don got lots of, lots of books on the go, if I don't have lots of books, I start to feel a bit nervous. I have to have a book pile. If I go on holiday I take like a suitcase, I have a book suitcase. That's why we tend to get in the car go to france because like, there's one suitcase just the books, and sarah takes the improving books and I take the non-improving books. Um, and then she reads mine because although she, she got, she went through, she got through ayn rand's the fountainhead, amazingly, and she read, maybe dick.

Speaker 2: 45:43

So she, she has had some um successes in her improving literature stuff, but um, but she always ends up reading my fun choices and then when you go to france, she can speak fluently you can speak fluently well, it's really helpful but really bad because I get really lazy and I don't give them my schoolboy French and she has learned a lot of technical wine vocabulary over the years because I'm also a massive lover of wine. We haven't been for a few years, but hopefully we can pick up again. The pandemic was a weird, weird time and post-pandemic has been a weird time and we both lost parents and so we've had a lot of kind of life type stuff and carried on running the bookshop.

Speaker 1: 46:29

Oh, I'm sorry to hear that that's tough.

Speaker 2: 46:31

It has been tough. Yeah, it has been tough.

Speaker 1: 46:34

Okay Now, sheridan, you have to promise me that the next time I speak with you on the show will be to promote your book, which will have been published.

Speaker 2: 46:43

Oh, wouldn't that be lovely. I need to knuckle down and finish it. I'm about two thirds of the way through, but I've been about two thirds of the way through for about two and a half years, so, but I did pick it up again the other day and, yeah, it's a lot of fun. I mean, 20 years has gone by so quickly and I've met so many lovely customers and it's their stories really that I want to be able to tell.

Speaker 1: 47:08

Sheridan, it's been great chatting with you.

Speaker 2: 47:10

Oh, you too, you too.

Speaker 1: 47:11

I want to get over there and see the bookshop, see the area, go hiking, meet Sarah, that would be wonderful.

Speaker 2: 47:18

Hopefully see you when you come to the Glorious Marches.

Speaker 1: 47:21

I would love that.

Speaker 2: 47:23

Alrighty, bye-bye, thank you.

Speaker 1: 47:25

You've been listening to my conversation with Sheridan Swinson, owner of Aardvark Books and Cafe. To help the show reach more people, please share episodes with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. To find out more about the Bookshop Podcast, go to thebookshoppodcastcom and make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to the show. You can also follow me at Mandy Jackson Beverly on X, instagram and Facebook and on YouTube at the Bookshop Podcast. If you have a favorite indie bookshop that you'd like to suggest we have on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you via the contact form at thebookshoppodcastcom. The Bookshop Podcast is written and produced by me, mandy Jackson-Beverly, theme music provided by Brian Beverly, executive assistant to Mandy, adrian Otterhahn, and graphic design by Frances Farala. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time. Thank you.