John Owen is a bookseller who runs the events program at the English Bookshop at Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus in Berlin. That English Bookshop? Probably the best I've ever been in, in my life.

We talk about, among other things: being blown away; bookshop lighting; window seating; how to display books; mixing things up and discovering new titles; bookshops as cultural institutions; Sally Rooney; sales of English language books in Germany; trying to reduce references to Margaret Atwood in this podcast; bookstores being like bakers; keeping your eyes open; aesthetic awareness; Rebecca Solnit's genre-bending books; Albanian political scientists; kooky, unusual best-sellers; elevator pitches; hating science fiction, and more.

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