If you’ve run out of books, only a few days into social-distancing, don’t despair, the Bermuda Bookstore on Queen Street is offering kerbside pick-up.

Miriam Kaye, who runs the bookstore with sister Hannah Wilmott, said they’ll be offering the service for as long as they can during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We are happy to take payments over the phone and take the books outside to people,” Ms Kaye said. “To me, bookstores are a fairly essential industry.”

She believes reading not only entertains, it also helps people learn and keep their minds busy during stressful times.

The Hamilton bookstore closed to walk-in customers yesterday.

Last week the store remained open as several customers came in to grab up reading material before the Government mandated stay-at-home period.

“We had one lady come in and pay $375 for books,” Ms Kaye said. “That was nice.”

Special orders and a new shipment came in on Thursday.

Ms Kaye said they’d run out of books with an apocalypse theme such as Stephen King’s novel The Stand, a post-apocalyptic novel about a pandemic of a weaponised strain of influenza that kills almost the entire world population.

She said people have been stocking up on general fiction and books about sports, yoga and cooking.

“We are selling a lot of cookbooks,” she said.

There had also been a lot of interest in activity books for children, and word puzzle books.

To help patrons find out what is in the store, the Bermuda Bookstore is posting photos and information about stock on their Facebook site.

Forced isolation has brought about a worldwide increase in interest in reading.

Popular British bookstore chain Waterstones experienced an “unprecedented demand” while open last week, seeing a 17 per cent increase in sales. Waterstones closed stores yesterday.

Ms Kaye said it was really important to them that they keep the Bermuda Bookstore going through this crisis. She and her sister have run it for 20 years. Before that, the late James Zuill ran it.

“The business is over 80 years old,” Ms Kaye said.

• For more information see their website www.bookstore.bm, call 295-3698, e-mail Sales@bookstore.bm or see the store’s Facebook page