The Green Bookshop: Recommended Reading for Doctors and Others from the Medical Journal Education for Primary Care

Preface
What makes a perfect bookshop? For me the London Review of Books Bookshop in London comes very close. It is not very big but the books are chosen with such care that the choice is always both intriguing and beguiling and it is very rare for me to summon the restraint necessary to leave empty- handed. It also includes a delightful little café with very good coffee and cakes that are much too tempting. John Salinsky’s Green Bookshop has all these components, with a particular emphasis on the importance of the coffee, but it is even better on two counts: fi rstly, his selection is equally broad but it has a subtle slant informed by his years of listening and talking to patients in general practice; and then there is the gentle erudition and commitment of the proprietor himself.
John believes in books as a force for good in the world in general and within general practice in particular. He relishes the power of words to help us make sense of what happens in the worlds around and within us and perhaps particularly to help us to understand the predicament of the other, of those whose experience of life is so different from our own. He believes in the capacity of books to enlarge our sympathies, our outlook and our experience and he knows that this potential is particularly important for doctors. He offers his own delight in books and sets out to tempt his customers to open a book
and begin reading but he is never didactic, never seeks to impose his own view or interpretation. His hope is to share one of the great pleasures of his life…