To help celebrate Independent Bookshop Week in the U.K. and Ireland, the Sunday Express shared some "page-turning romances: couples who found love at a bookstore," noting that "there's something about a bookshop that inspires the notion of romance."
Cathy Rentzenbrink met her husband, Erwyn, at an induction day for a job at a new Waterstones on Oxford Street, where she "sat next to a tall, rather strange-looking Dutchman called Erwyn who had the remnants of a black eye that he said he'd got playing squash. I thought, 'If you've ever played squash in your life, then I'm the Dutchman!'... A few years later, we got married and had a baby boy. His first three-word sentence was 'Mummy read book' and I really hope he might fancy a Saturday job in a bookshop when he's a bit older."
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| Jon and Jenny Hind | |
Jessica Graham, met her future husband Marek Laskowski in 1987, while he was browsing in her bookshop, Primrose Hill Books. "I was quickly aware of regular customers, one of whom came in every Saturday morning to buy paperback fiction--some crime novels, some literary. We struck up our first lengthy conversation when he ordered a book that happened to have been written by one of my former university tutors.... Then he started working on Saturdays--otherwise, we would scarcely have seen each other. Before long, we moved in together and Marek became a semi-permanent fixture at the shop, too, much preferring it to being a computer consultant.
"We married in 1993... In 2000, our son Tom was born and we brought him to work each day, popping him into his crib or playpen in the office and carrying him in a sling on the shop floor. The customers were enchanted. Almost four years later, our daughter Lydia was born, and I took her into work, too. We've carried on giving each other books as gifts, though it's become increasingly difficult to pull off a surprise."
Jon Hind met his wife, Jenny, on a first date in a Hertfordshire bookshop. "When we met, I was a single parent with two teenage daughters and Jenny was single and caring for her widowed mother. We had been exchanging messages when there was a 20% sale at David's in Letchworth, my local bookshop. I knew Jenny was a bookworm, so I suggested she came over to Letchworth so we could meet face to face.... We carried on visiting the bookshop throughout our blossoming relationship and bonded over the authors we had in common."