BrokenTune

When @MoonlightReader first mentioned the buddy read of Miss Pym Disposes, I immediately thought about how to celebrate reading my last Josephine Tey book in style. 

I mean, Tey has become one of my favourite authors over the years and I had kept back Miss Pym Disposes for a special occasion, knowing full well that finishing it will likely lead to a reading slump and author hangover.

I mean, I still have a few other books and plays to read by the author under her other pen name Gordon Daviot but these are of an entirely different style and premise, they are not "Tey mysteries".

So, when I thought about it, it also occurred to me that I still had not been to that secondhand bookshop in Inverness, Tey's/Daviot's/Mackintosh's birthplace, that I've meant to seek out for years. 

As the weather forecast for today was pretty grim, I finally decided that I might as well spend the day indoors elsewhere, hop on a train and see if it is true that the bookshop has a wood-burning stove on its premises. Tey book in hand I set out on a small adventure...

The weather forecast was wrong, btw. It was cold, but really sunny.

Never mind. 

Leakey's, the bookshop, is currently housed in a former church. It does not like much from the outside...

...but looks can be deceptive.

And yes. Yes, there is a wood-burner right in the centre of the shop. 

What a brilliant place! The shop does have a small general fiction section, but it mostly specialises in antiquarian books and maps. The travel section upstairs is pretty impressive, too! I found it difficult to contain my book purchases to only a few books, but I saw an edition of Freya Stark's The Southern Gates of Arabia, which I hope will make up for the (so far) disappointing book by Gertrude Bell I am reading at present.