Experiencing A Bookstore

“The best bookstores today - and ever, really - are about the experience of a bookstore,” says Josh Niesse, co-owner of Serenbe’s independent bookstore, Hills & Hamlets Bookshop. “The magic, serendipity, sense of discovery, creation of community and connection with other readers, book-lovers, dreamers and thinkers.”

Serenbe and Hills & Hamlets were a perfect match from the start. Josh, who opened Underground Books in Carrollton in 2011 with his wife, Megan Bell, has learned two key things from bringing a bookshop to Serenbe: “One: We’ve learned how to be a community hub where people enjoy gathering. And two: Creating a unique and memorable atmosphere that actively evokes the magic and serendipity we imagine when we think of the best bookstores we’ve ever experience, whether first-hand or in fiction,” he says.

Located in the ground floor of the Textile Lofts in Grange, Hills & Hamlets Bookshop focuses on new fiction and non-fiction books in genres including the arts, architecture, design, town planning, agriculture and food, green living and business, spirituality and “indie bookstore staples like literary fiction and books for children and young adults,” Josh says.”We also feature selections of vintage, rare and antiquarian books.

With the help of Serenbe resident and movie-set designer Peter Clemens, who Josh calls “our secret design-guru-magician,” Hills & Hamlets Bookshop is “a bookstore that evokes the fantasy novels of our youth combined with what we imagine a 19th-century London bookstore might have felt like, only airier and brighter.”

Hills & Hamlets Bookshop is open Thursdays-Sundays, 11am-4pm.