Rare & Racy

Rare and Racey has to be much a part of Sheffield’s history as the Steel Works or Norfolk park flats! It mainly stocks second hand books for students, the antiquarian and the collector. Expect some of the weirdest, brain frying music when you go in there. Where the owner gets his strange kind of ambient music from I don’t know but he plays it just about all day every day. Very rarely have I walked in the shop and heard anything relatively normal being played. It’s a wonderful little shop though that’s a delight to anybody that loves reading. The staff are very friendly and helpful. It’s also a good place for students to take their book collections to and get a relatively decent price for them. Also stocks CD’s as well as book. A much loved shop in Sheffield.

I adore this book and record shop.
The shop sells both general fiction and more specialised and rare books. The general fiction section is quite vast for a shop it’s size, and there are lots of interesting and unusual titles to be found.
The shop has a record and CD section which is really good for rarities. I really enjoy just browsing through the different sections of records in the hope of coming across something exciting or forgotten.
The owner is clearly a music enthusiast and the shop is always filled with jazz and blues played from the record player behind the counter.
Upstairs there are meandering small rooms with really interesting and unexpected items. For instance, within the Local History section you can find copies of 19^th and early 20^th century local newspapers; and mixed among various other things are vintage artprints and architectural drawings.
There are obviously also things you expect in most second hand book shops, sale racks, first edition areas etc. but these are flanked by the walls covered in pasted pages of books and vintage postcards which are available for sale.
I really love the atmosphere of this shop in general and you could spend hours searching through the novelities within this characterfilled shop.