Night at the bookshop: Waterstones stages a sleepover after a tourist got trapped in the store

After an American tourist got locked in to one of their bookshops, Waterstones are inviting volunteers for a sleepover. Here are ten short books you could read in an evening – but what would you do if you could spend the night in a bookshop? Let us know in the comments below

Marta Bausells
theguardian.com, Tuesday 21 October 2014 12.17 EDT

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Waterstones bookshop — All lit up ... Waterstones in Piccadilly, London, where a lucky few will spend Friday night. Photograph: Airbnb.com

Wandering around bookshops has its dangers. One minute you’re browsing; the next thing you know, you’re locked in for the night. That’s the situation a Texan tourist, David Willis, found himself in last week, in a London Waterstones. He took it in good humour, at least, sending this out on Instagram:

Twitter had fun with it, of course. By the next afternoon, he had been retweeted over 12,000 times:

Hi @Waterstones I've been locked inside of your Trafalgar Square bookstore for 2 hours now. Please let me out.
— David Willis (@DWill_) October 16, 2014

The friend he first contacted shared their WhatsApp exchange with the world:

How it all began: The initial panic. @Waterstones @DWill_ #freethewaterstones1 #waterstonestexan pic.twitter.com/UTzV9Y5HRM
— Amy Mac (@Ames_Mac) October 17, 2014

I'm free
— David Willis (@DWill_) October 16, 2014

Now Waterstones are offering a sleepover to ten guests and their partners this Friday (24 October) in their flagship London Piccadilly store – perhaps in response to all the bookworms tweeting “OMG I would kill to be locked up in a bookstore”. They have teamed up with travel website Airbnb, which did something similar with an Ikea store in Australia earlier this year. Here’s how to enter, if you want to pitch your airbed in the “Children’s and history” section, and enjoy sleeping tips from sleep expert Richard Wiseman, as well as other activities. If you don’t make it, you can follow the action on Friday with the hashtag #WaterstonesSleepover.

Ten books you could read in an evening

In the meantime, what would you pick off the shelves if you could spend a night surrounded by literary greats in Europe’s largest bookshop, with over 8.5 miles of books? Here are 10 books you could read in an evening (the number of pages varies depending on the edition):

The Embassy of Cambodia by Zadie Smith (80 pages): a novella that follows the life of a young woman, Fatou, who works as a domestic servant in Willesden, north-west London.
The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín (112 pages): the Irish writer’s Booker-nominated short novel written in the voice of Mary, mother of Jesus.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (192 pages): Bradbury’s classic dystopia about a future society where books are forbidden.
Animal Farm by George Orwell (144 pages): still banned in many countries, an allegory of the Russian revolution set in a farmyard.
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (112 pages): Hemingway’s classic story of a fisherman’s struggle with a giant fish.
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes (160 pages): a Booker-winning novel about friendship, memory and looking back on life.
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (208 pages): the archetypal modern African novel, Achebe’s essential work tells the story of Okonkwo, a leader and wrestling champion in a fictional Nigerian village.
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (128 pages): this classic novella follows two migrant ranch workers who move around California during the Great Depression.
Heartburn by Nora Ephron (224 pages): the director and screenwriter based this bittersweet novel on the breakdown of her marriage to Washington Post journalist Carl Bernstein.
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald (180 pages): the classic American novel is a must-read both for its mesmerising use of language and for its depiction of love, the jazz age and the perils of the American dream.