Site of the week: Crockatt and Powell

It's a new year so I'm dedicating the first site of the week of 2006 to a new venture. It has only a few entries so far but this blog by Crockatt and Powell Booksellers of Lower Marsh SE1 is looking promising. Written by two friends who run the new independent bookshop, there's something ever so slightly 84 Charing Cross Road about the tone as they discuss books and the booktrade. They also do a nice line in self-deprecation and whimsy as they describe the characters of the neighbourhood and a fantasy of challenging Scott Pack of Waterstone's to a Roman-style fight. I particularly like the rant about stickers on books in which the bookseller's joy at the forthcoming publication of Julian Barnes's Arthur and George in paperback is dampened by the knowledge that "not only is it being published in a maximum dirt-attracting cream matte cover - hours of fingerprint-removing fun to be had by all! - but it is also being dispatched to shops with a charming Richard and Judy bookclub sticker on it, which you can either leave on for best "Oh fuck, I thought I wanted to read this, maybe I don't" effect, or peel off, potentially adding - if not done with requisite skill - a whole extra level of book-destroying lint-loving sticky roundness on the front." Read, learn and chortle and best of luck to the folks at Crockatt and Powell.