Golden Hare Books
What is it: An award-winning (Bookshop of the Year 2019 UK & Ireland) indie bookstore to warm your heart (and hands by its wood-burning stove) in Edinburgh’s village within the city, Stockbridge.
What you need to know: Founded in 2012 by Sir Mark Jones – previously the Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Museums of Scotland – this is a bookstore as curated space in both how it looks and what gets to be included. Covers face out and draw attention to great design, creating an immediate visual hook for potential readers and making objects of the books themselves.
The range of its small careful selection of books changes constantly –‘the idea is that you never visit the same bookshop twice.’ Golden Hare is known for bringing in a wide range of choices, including works in translation, books by women, and diverse children’s authors
How to bring this into your life: It’s all about the reading subscription, Postbooks, which sends a beautifully packaged fiction or non-fiction book(s) each month specially chosen for you, often around a theme, like Green Transformation, and with its own reading guide. The key difference though is that Golden Hare supports indie presses and small publishers in its choices such as Charco Press, Tilted Axis, or & Other Stories, widening your reading from the usual suspects and making sure more writers get attention from readers.
Golden Hare is also a bookstore where you can become a Member, and during usual times there is an active book club and Sunday Stories reading club for kids. Golden Hare has pivoted to the ways we now shop: click and collect, and Saturday bike deliveries.
Why it caught our attention: This is a bookstore that works hard. It does a lot. Not just in its active support of indie publishers but its reach within the local community and that of the city of Edinburgh. In 2019, Golden Hare hosted its first book festival with local partners and it co-hosts the Edinburgh Book Fringe with Lighthouse Books. Books are embedded in the cultural life of Edinburgh – a UNESCO City of Literature. It was famously here that J.K. Rowling wrote some of her Harry Potter series and Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes. Golden Hare keeps the tradition alive of supporting local voices and creating a place for the writing community.
In their own words: “We are a knowledgeable team of self-confessed reading addicts who have been selling beautiful and important books since 2012.
Our charming independent bookshop is situated in Edinburgh's Stockbridge, where you can find an ever-changing collection of fiction and non-fiction for readers of all ages. We hold close to 2000 titles covering all genres of writing from cookery to travel, from flower arranging to science fiction - and many more topics in between.”
Lost at home: It's winter where we are. Maybe there too. Cozy down with a book. Choose one of Golden Hare’s winter picks: Once Upon a River by Diana Settenfield, The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, and The Changeling by Victor LaValle. While purchasing, make a resolution not to buy from internet giants (take this resolve into the rest of 2021).
While here: Seek out Golden Hare collaborators café Lovecrumbs and Smith & Gertrude, as well as If Lost favorites the Royal Botanic Gardens and Lifestory.
