The bookshops in Hay are certainly diverse – apart from the shops that carry a wide general stock, there are bookshops specializing in natural history, poetry, children’s literature, and mysteries. There is also a bookshop whose specialty is books about bees – not surprisingly it is the town’s smallest. The Hay Castle bookshop, owned by Booth specializes in such varied subjects such as transport, photography, American Indians and humor. Many shops have an excellent stock of American and British literature, including some rare and valuable first editions.
If your budget does not stretch to expensive first editions, there are plenty of bookshops where you can browse to your hearts content for paperbacks at reasonable prices, as well as discounted new books. One of my favorite bookshops in the town is the Hay Cinema bookshop, with its warren of passageways and rooms and estimated 200,000 used books on every conceivable subject. Look for the famous “pyramid of books” in front of the store.
Who Would Want to Read This?
And what happens to books that nobody wants to buy? One of the most popular places for browsers is the yard in front of the castle, where books that have presumably been deemed “unsaleable” are stacked up outside on tables and exposed to the wind and rain and sold for pennies. Another “graveyard” for old books is the field where books are sold on the honor system – you put money in a rusty metal box attached to the wall, and walk out with your books. Judging by some of the titles found there you might well wonder who buys these books – a recent find was the no doubt fascinating historical memoir “I was Hitler’s Maid”