With Amazon still throwing its considerable weight into the ongoing dispute with Hachette and bean-counters bullish over prospects for the ebook market, this might not seem the best time to be opening a new bricks-and-mortar bookshop. But 111 years after the opening of its legendary Charing Cross Road shop, the independent bookshop Foyles is moving 100m down the road into a gleaming new vision of bookselling's future.

According to Christopher Foyle, this leap of faith is to help the company acquire a "larger share of what might be a smaller market", by focusing on the bookshop "experience". But the experience that comes most fondly to mind when we think of Foyles is of chaos, dust-filled shelves and "a payment system so arcane that many visitors chose to steal rather than buy their favoured paperback".

Filled with nostalgia for the golden age of browsing, we want to hear your memories of independent bookshops. Do you recall finding a favourite book, or an amazing literary find? Did you forge friendships, or fall in love? Can you remember a time when the unexpected happened between the bookshelves?

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