Misty Blegvad at his kiosk in Exmouth Market

A KIOSK selling rare and unusual books from vintage porn to George Orwell has opened in Exmouth Market.

Misty Blegvad, who has dealt second-hand books for around a decade, trades titles spanning art and design, photography, esoterica, popular culture, counterculture, fashion, film and music.

“The criteria is kind of broad and loose, but I know it when I see it. Then I buy it,” he said.

He took over the kiosk from its former operator Miguel, who ran it under the banner of Exmouth Cultural Kiosk, trading books and sometimes serving ales in the eclectic Clerkenwell street.

“He [Miguel] deserves the credit because, once upon a time, he was walking past this kiosk when it was disused and shut for ages, and he took the initiative to get in touch with the council and say, ‘hey, is there any chance I can use this kiosk?’”

Misty previously sold at Peckham Car Boot, with whom he has had a “long and happy history” since its launch in 2019.

“Shoutout Miguel and shoutout the council for having some willingness,” he said. “The willingness of the council is an important factor in all this because if it wasn’t for them, this might just be another coffee stall.”

Misty, who works in the heritage industry, told the Tribune that now is a great time to be in the pre-loved and vintage books game – the market is seeing a “meteoric rise, thank goodness”.

“I think that is a direct response to AI,” he explained. “It fits into a broader trend of a return to physical media; records, CDs, cassette tapes, VHSs, all this old physical media is really coming back into vogue because people don’t feel like they can trust the digisphere so much anymore.”

Second-hand books at Misty’s kiosk

He said recent stories revealing how AI companies buy second-hand books to metabolise their contents and then destroy them outraged the bookselling community.

In August, the Camden New Journal reported that independent booksellers were seeing influxes of orders for obscure titles from buyers believed to be acting on behalf of US tech companies who train AI models on the second-hand material. The BBC reported a court ruling in the US that revealed the process “includes removing a book’s spine so all the pages can be scanned rapidly”.

Kiosk Bookshop’s collection is full of both lesser-known and coveted titles, wide-ranging in genre and rich with taste.
20th century editions of Interview magazine and porn magazines with a “freaky vintage aesthetic” populate the kiosk’s corners, as do several regular books Misty buys on repeat either because they do well or because he “loves them intensely”.

A ‘thrilling, mysterious and fascinating’ title Misty loves

“This is one such book – The Bog People by PV Glob,” he said, holding up a small black volume. “Love this book to death. It’s just amazing.”

The 1965 work by Danish archaeologist Peter Glob is a study of Iron Age bodies preserved in northern European bogs.

“I just find it so utterly thrilling and mysterious and fascinating,” Misty said.

Another frequent flyer in his inventory is Charlotte Salomon’s Life? or Theatre?, a graphic autobiography by a German painter who was ultimately murdered at Auschwitz, aged just 26 and pregnant.

The kiosk’s interior is filled with other biographies and autobiographies, Italian architecture books, novels in French, poetry by Jim Morrison, modern classics from JD Salinger, George Orwell and the like, the poetry of EE Cummings, and “anything Pasolini or Fellini-related”.

Visitors can also pick up their free copy of the Islington Tribune at Misty’s kiosk.