The Bookseller.com

1st December 2008

De Botton offers 'book prescriptions'

18.09.08 Graeme Neill

A group of authors, including Alain de Botton, have helped establish a new-style bookshop offering "book prescriptions" from a range of only 55 titles. The shop, named The School of Life, is based in Marchmont Street in Bloomsbury, central London. It sells books, artwork, courses, holidays and therapuetic ­services.

The shop’s founder and director, Sophie Howarth, said it would stock a rotating range of around 55 titles at any one time, arranged according to themes. "The shop is designed like an apothecary and we think we offer intelligent persons' self-help," she said. “Like books you should read when you have fallen catastrophically in love, for example.”

The shop is about to launch intellectual gift boxes. Retailing for around £50 and featuring five different titles, the boxes feature books selected by De ­Botton and Robert Macfarlane among others, with a short leaflet outlining the reasons behind their choices.

The School of Life also offers a "bibliotherapy" service for customers who don’t know what books they want. The in-house "bibliotherapist" Susan Elderkin offers a five-month programme for £50 whereby a customer can have regular email and phone consultations about their reading choices. The price does not include books.

Alternatively, a customer may buy one prescription for £35 with a gift box containing one book and recommendations for future reading. "More and more books are being published but people are reading fewer and fewer authors," said Elderkin. "What we do here is prescribe people books that they would enjoy but may not have heard of."

The Bookseller would like to make it clear that though De Botton was a founding member of the shop, Sophie Howarth is founder and director of The School of Life. Her blog about the shop can be read here: A chemist for the mind. Author Robert Macfarlane has helped select a gift box for the shop, but is not otherwise involved.

Graeme Neill Alain De Botton The School of Life Sophie Howarth

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