Books, and the people who read them: bookshops and libraries hold multitudes

Ince changed "playing for 12,000 people in Manchester Arena for playing to 12 people in the Margate bookshop". He travelled 8000 miles, visiting 104 independent bookshops, whose role he celebrates in the cultural life of local communities. Ince could be termed the Bill Bryson of bookshops with accounts of fascinating characters, including booksellers, and social observations, ranging from the changing weather to the vicissitudes of British Rail,

The only town that overwhelms him is the booktown of Hay-on-Wye, because "It's hard to experience that victorious gazelle-hunt sensation when you are surrounded by so many (books), it dampens the sense of victory". In Corbridge, he finds the bookshop housed in a former church but whose preservation order means the pulpit is where authors sign copies of their books.

Ince describes his book collecting as "drawn to the highbrow and the lowbrow, but less interested in what lies between" and does not " buy books for their rarity of potential profit". Nonetheless, he is elated when he finds treasures, such as a sixth impression of Albert Einstein's Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (1921) for just 30p, which he estimates could be worth £300, although he gets more pleasure from the fact it contained an old publisher bookmark of The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. He revels in the fact that he finds in Wigtown's famous secondhand bookshop a large collection of photographs of Australian actor, dancer and choreographer, Robert Helpmann.

Ince reflects on the ability of a book to influence well after its author has died, "someone who is no more than ash or bone can still change me. Their company means there is always the possibility of something to be discovered." He says his life is best explained by the Japanese word tsundoku - the passion to collect books but without necessarily reading them - "I think I love books even more than I love reading". But, he does reflect, filling his house full of books does put him on the "cusp of justifiable grounds for a divorce".

John Bevis in An English Library Journey probably avoided a divorce by accompanying his wife on her work travels around England from 2010 to 2021. With time on his hands, Bevis visited numerous public libraries, especially as these provided access to computer terminals.

Bevis spends more space on the issues in obtaining library cards and library buildings, which range from Victorian and Edwardian grandeur to a converted corset factory, than the actual book stock of the libraries and their clientele. Libraries, which used to be known as "street-corner universities" for earlier generations, still provide a sanctuary for many disadvantaged members of the public in England.

Bevis does highlight, however, with numerous examples, the English library "catastrophe", the dramatic decline of the public library system since the Conservative local council cuts from 2010. No fewer than 773 libraries closed during Bevis's travels, with 10,000 jobs lost. Many only survived with volunteer workforces. Bevis recounts his visit to Birmingham's £189 million library, which, two years after its official opening in 2013, reduced its opening hours by nearly 50 per cent and made half the library staff redundant.

Some relief comes in Alex Johnson's delightful The Book Lover's Joke Book, which has the following joke on its front cover: "I slipped over in the library this morning. It was the non-friction section". Johnson assembles a vast array of jokes and puns about authors, agents, publishers, librarians, bookshops, reviewers and even light bulbs. For example: "How many book editors does it take to change a lightbulb. One, but they need to keep changing it".

Library jokes include not being able to find books about women and religion because the library had put them in the nun-fiction section; a customer seeking a book on abdominal pain, found it was missing a whole section because someone had had ripped out the appendix, and a request, "do you have any books on radiators?", received a reply - "no they're just on the normal shelves".

Further samples." Which monarch wrote the most books - King Author"; "I'm reading Dracula in braille and I'm sure something awful is just about to happen, I can feel it" ; "For my nephew's christening present I bought a huge compendium of every story Dahl wrote. They are all Roald into one".