John Sandoe's

John Sandoe’s, in the heart of Chelsea off the King’s Road, is perhaps likelier than most to have a celebrity following. We join Simon Russell Beale as he explores just what it is about it that makes customers including Joan Collins, Tom Stoppard, Elton John and Felicity Kendal (who introduced Beale to the shop) keep coming back for more, and shares his recommendation for your book club...

As the shop management itself observes; “John Sandoe started this shop in 1957. Before that, these premises were partly devoted to the grooming of poodles. The other half was a junkshop, where books were sold by weight. In 1989 the shop was sold to members of staff. Since then, the business has grown and moved with the times, but it remains essentially the same - an independent literary bookshop with many regular customers.

We are on three floors of an eighteenth century building. Books crammed in everywhere, up the stairs and piled on tables. No surface escapes its burden, except a few seats, and computer keyboards. And a few pathways - yes, you can get up the stairs provided you are fit. In this limited space we have about 25,000 books. Newcomers are inclined to ask if there is any system to the arrangement. (There is, but it requires experience to crack it.) It is a delight for browsers, a bibliophile's heaven.”

How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell
“It’s not a self help book. It’s actually a biography of Montaigne the man who invented the essay, the curse of every schoolchild. It’s a wonderful book that traces his life. It’s a biography. But also she traces the arguments that he pursues rather lightly through his essays.  He was obviously a wonderful man and he would have been very good company and eventually I hope it’ll persuade me to read the essays themselves. I’ve had them sitting on my shelf for about 30 years completely untouched so perhaps this book will do it.”
How to get on well with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love - such questions arise in most people's lives. They are all versions of a bigger question: how do you live? How do you do the good or honourable thing, while flourishing and feeling happy? This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-92), perhaps the first truly modern individual. A nobleman, public official and wine-grower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them 'essays', meaning 'attempts' or 'tries'. Into them, he put whatever was in his head: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog's ears twitched when it was dreaming, as well as the appalling events of the religious civil wars raging around him. "The Essays" was an instant bestseller, and over four hundred years later, Montaigne's honesty and charm still draw people to him. Readers come to him in search of companionship, wisdom and entertainment - and in search of themselves. This book, a spirited and singular biography (and the first full life of Montaigne in English for nearly fifty years), relates the story of his life by way of the questions he posed and the answers he explored. It traces his bizarre upbringing (made to speak only Latin), youthful career and sexual adventures, his travels, and his friendships with the scholar and poet Etienne de La Boetie and with his adopted 'daughter', Marie de Gournay. And as we read, we also meet his readers - who for centuries have found in Montaigne an inexhaustible source of answers to the haunting question, 'how to live?'.