How Growing up in a Spooky House Started a Lifelong Reading Habit

I've always read a lot. So much so that I can hardly get through a day without reading something, and I still struggle to fall asleep without a book nearby.

As a child I would stay up far too late reading. usually by torchlight so my parents didn’t tell me off. Partly because I loved stories and partly because our old house felt spooky after dark. All old houses make creepy noises in the night. The older, the noisier, and our house was over 400 years old so very noisy and creepy! Reading was a useful distraction from whatever ghosts and ghouls my imagination had decided were lurking nearby. It was a very active imagination. Still is.

I've never really thought too hard about why I read so much. I just always have. But looking back, I suspect all those books have shaped how I see the world. Not in any dramatic way. Just gradually. One story. One character. One observation at a time.

I nearly always gravitate towards books that have stood the test of time, particularly the classics. Maybe that’s because of the old houses too? Hundreds of years of changing fashions, changing tastes and changing societies, yet people still read them. That tells me there's something worth finding there.

I've always been drawn to different authors for different reasons.

I love the Brontës because they're so intense. Everything matters. The emotions feel huge. People are constantly wrestling with themselves and with each other.

I love Jane Austen because nobody understood people and their faults better. The little social games. The misunderstandings. The gap between what people really think and what they're prepared to say out loud.

I love Charles Dickens because his characters are so vivid. You can meet someone and immediately think, "I've met you before." In retail, I often do.

And then there's P. G. Wodehouse. If the Brontës are intense and Austen is perceptive, Wodehouse is a reminder that life is often completely ridiculous. Plans go wrong. People misunderstand each other. Chaos erupts from nowhere. And somehow everything works out in the end.

Different authors. Different lessons. But they all sharpen the same skill. Understanding people.

Alongside the classics, I've spent decades reading business books. Marketing. Psychology. Leadership. Pricing. Consumer behaviour. Decision making. Some have been excellent. Some less so. But here's what I've realised. Knowledge by itself isn't particularly valuable.

The value comes from application. The classics help us understand people. Business books help us understand systems. Experience teaches us how to combine the two.

And then there's Agatha Christie. What fascinates me about Christie isn't the murders. It's the method. The clues are there all along. Tiny details. Things everybody else overlooks. A passing comment. An unusual behaviour. A small inconsistency. A piece of evidence that doesn't quite fit. The detective doesn't solve the mystery through magic. The detective pays attention. They observe. They gather clues. They test theories. They look for evidence. And eventually a picture begins to emerge.

The more I think about it, the more I realise that shopkeeping isn't entirely different. Customers leave clues everywhere. In what they buy. In what they almost buy. In the questions they ask. In the products they keep picking up. In the displays they stop at. In the things they complain about. In the things they never mention at all.

The clues are there. The challenge is learning to see them. Every book leaves something behind. Every customer leaves something behind. Every mistake leaves something behind. Every success leaves something behind too. Over time all those experiences, observations, stories, lessons and ideas become tangled together. That's where ideas come from. And that‘s where smart shopkeeping comes from too.