I’ve done some shameful things to sell my books. But there’s a line even I can’t cross

‘Bookshops are wonderful – but they can break your heart.’ Photograph: (Posed by model)/Tuan Tran/Getty Images

Some days I would rather get my bikini line waxed in the window of Dunelm than walk into another bookshop.

Not that bookshops aren’t wonderful places. Of course they are. Bookshops are seething with joy and knowledge and comfort and diversion. They are hideously beautiful to look at, full of like-minded people and ripe with the excitement of discovery. But that, you see, is the problem. Like a stranger holding your childhood toy in one hand and a claw hammer in the other, bookshops have the power to break your heart into tiny shards and then throw the splinters in your eyes.