We arrive at an industrial unit in Hemel Hempstead. 66 Book Club is UK’s largest leading book wholesaler, specialising in clearance and remainders and stocking over 15,000 titles.

Once a month it opens to the public for a weekend. I heard about 66 Book Club back in August. I put the September weekend dates straight into my diary with the promise of 70 per cent discount on the cover price of all books sold and only costing £2 to join. We get into the socially-distanced queue wearing our face coverings and are welcomed with a smile. We are given a basket and asked to head straight upstairs.

We reach the top of the stairs to a humongous warehouse crammed with what feels like a zillion books! The storeroom is vast, with floor to ceiling shelving units. Customers are zig-zagging their way through each aisle and trying to keep out of each other’s way, exploring shelf upon shelf of every type of book imaginable, every genre that you could conceive of. It’s so engaging to flit from sci-fi to romance, from history to sociology, then to the classic literature stock that gradually turns into bestselling novels. As they are remaindered books, I enjoy discovering some of the more secondary works of well-known authors. My basket grows heavier as I wander through each aisle and it’s hard to exercise any self-discipline.

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Classic books are piled alongside lesser-known titles

My husband’s basket includes Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. In our enthusiasm, we wander off in different directions, quite happy to lose each other a few times as we have no intention of encroaching on each other’s book wonderland experience. It is not the sort of place where you linger and chat about the books you’ve chosen. It is more of an immediate hunter-gatherer experience and later tonight when we’re more relaxed, we’ll have a look at each other’s finds.

You have no idea what will appear on the next shelf, from Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, to Noam Chomsky’s Profit over People. But that is the thrill of it, it’s random and not all laid out for you. I find things that I had no idea I wanted, in fact I have forgotten what day it is or what I did this morning. I am immersed in ‘the power of now’, seeking and searching.

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Inside the warehouse

This is what it must be like to walk around an Amazon warehouse. It is a strange shopping experience. No customer service, no book recommendations by staff. Customers are not sure when they’ll be here again, so they pile more and more books into their baskets. Everybody is in a good mood and intrigued by such a wide selection of random books. I could spend hours and hours here. It’s fun! The choice is vast and the books are literally brand new. They are stored in flat piles and some of them slightly crackle as I peel them from a pristine pile that has never been separated.

Of course, the younger generation is switching to e-readers and to their phones – but not today! When I look around, most customers are under 35. It’s a young crowd enthused and animated by generous discounts. I wonder, if a new trend is beginning. The relentless rise of e-commerce has not appeared to destroy the printed bookselling industry. Young readers continue to love the physical form of printed books. In a world where so many of them are struggling to get jobs, heading to huge bargain warehouses could be the new way to shop.

With e-books taking a hold over the last decade, booksellers have had to up their game, sleekly defining the shop floor environment into a well-ordered light and airy lay-out, providing customers with armchairs and coffee shops, introducing activities and events to improve customer experience.

After all, “there are limits to the online experience,” Waterstones managing director James Daunt reminds us. Booksellers aim to keep surprising customers, keeping things fresh, chatting with them and building their trust, entertaining and engaging their audience, merchandising the shop window.

It's true that local bookshops can provide a sense of community and this is possibly going to become more important as the world becomes more and more digitised. However, in these post-Covid times, the idea of a dusty old warehouse selling remaindered books at ridiculously reduced prices has huge appeal. Given the looming recession, customers simply require a wide selection of books and getting good value, happy to cut out the glitz and glamour of retail showmanship if it means buying 10 classic paperbacks for £30 instead of £100!

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Marisa with her haul

I’m enjoying the freedom to pick anything up and not worry about neat displays or being observed by a bookseller. I pick up a few books for my daughter like the biography of Alexander McQueen, Blood Beneath the Skin. The graphic novel of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. and a colourful Pantone notebook. I have a selection of books in my basket, Love Poems by Pablo Neruda, Black Venus by Angela Carter and Robert MacFarlane’s Landmarks. Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth and Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon.

Booksellers were traditionally linked to their publishing houses which was a complex combination of commerce and culture, so purchasing a book is not like buying a vase, it is a cultural pursuit. Literature honours the story makers, the time travellers, the dreamers of dreams. Terry Pratchett once said that “books bend space and time” thereby expanding our minds and connecting us to a global culture and beyond.

Tapping into a colossal reservoir of literature, absorbing knowledge, thoughts and inspiring ideas, elevates our minds. Books that took years to write and perfect are literary gifts to us all. Books that underwent hundreds of edits and revisions. Books that were rejected by hundreds of agents and publishers. Books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover that were subject to court cases, or like Stephen King’s Carrie, rejected more than 30 times before going on to sell more than a million copies.

Our baskets and budgets have reached the max, so we agree to come back again in a month or two. We join a queue that leads to the check-out. A couple in front of us have selected a crateful of children’s books. The staff are standing behind desks adding up each customers’ books manually with calculators. Our books are then piled into a box. We leave with more than we can carry. I can’t wait till next time! I’ll start in the basement and treat myself to a few coffee table fashion and interiors books. It’ll be the start of my Christmas shopping!

  • Marisa Laycock moved to St Albans in 2000. She enjoys sharing her experiences of living in the city. These columns are also available as podcasts from 92.6FM Radio Verulam at www.radioverulam.com/smallcitylife .