It takes guts to open a bookstore in Oxford. The competition has devout fanbases, long histories, and eye-watering budgets. The university libraries have staggering architecture and mounds of mildewed books. Oxfam basements charm with their rare finds and scratchy marginalia. Blackwell’s spans a whopping four floors. Its basement room is as wide as the hole it burns in students’ pockets. In a city like this, literature can’t be confined to the bookshelves. It courses beneath tourists’ feet, in long underground passages linking libraries. It swarms pub chalkboards, where pubs list their famous patrons with more pride than they do their wines. Tolkien drank here, boasts the Turf Tavern, and so did CS Lewis. Everywhere you look, tote bags hang heavy, tourists waddle with stacks of books, and whispers of the city’s great authors drift through the air. Oxford is a readerly city: the station of bookseller is sacred and demanding.

The same is true of the city’s cafes. Oxford’s chain cafes, the bland claret of Prets and Costas, are to be found on every corner. Yet it is also home to cozier spots that fit the city’s gothic, rain-soaked mood. These are the spots visitors pride themselves on having discovered. The city’s paradoxical pace, at once dreamily unhurried and maniacal, makes coffee a lynchpin for essay-assailed students and city breakers alike. Oxfordians love to watch their city go by,listening in on snippets of conversation in its arabica-infused dives. They also love to churn out essays at blistering pace, scalding fingers on keys and tongues on americanos. To make a mark here, coffee shops have to cater to both modes of thought. They have to give the tourist their idealized, mythical vision of Oxford, while offering students a cheap, warm corner with sturdy desks and ample sockets.

Oxford has no short supply of bookstores and coffee shops. It’s not easy to make a splash in either market. Gulp Fiction, a newcomer in Oxford’s Covered Market, has set its sights on both.

At first glance, it’s hard to tell how Gulp Fiction plans to stand out. Its mishmash décor is charming, its shelves unpretentious and homely. The books on display are well-curated if a little sparse, more geared to trendy “BookTok” fiction than the dusty classics. The shop is a welcome break in the Covered Market, which is otherwise dominated by jewelry merchants and food stalls. Still, it doesn’t floor you. Aside from its initial warmth, so crucial to a bookstore’s appeal, there is little to suggest it merits devotion. Coffee shops in bookstores are nothing new, even if the IPAs on the menu are a welcome addition. Soon, though, you see what the fuss is all about. A small table is stacked with books, their jackets glossy and bright. Beneath them is a promising placard: free coffee with any book from this table.

It’s a delightful, dangerous offer. When I was a student, I found millions of justifications for splashing out on books: they’re educational; they improve my craft; they’re cheap; I get a student discount; I don’t do it that often. I can quit when I want. The same went for coffee, although it was hard to call the third expresso a bracing intellectual exercise. I could now get both for one price. How could I resist?

Visiting Gulp Fiction means witnessing the gradual collapse of my willpower. Like the cocaine-addled mouse in a twisted laboratory experiment, impulses tug at me with their dread gravity, until I twitchily concede to temptation. Even with a backpack full of more hardbacks than I can deadlift, and a jackrabbit heart-rate, I still buy an extra book from the table. Bookstores may be intellectual havens, but any true bookworm can tell you that book-shopping is a primal, degrading act. Any notions of free will fall away as blurbs absorb, covers catch the eye, and bank balances careen towards zero.

If it wasn’t tempting enough already, the books on the table are good ones. They seem to cycle from zeitgeist fiction like Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation (an odd accompaniment to a flat white) to top-shelf scientific works. On my first visit, I got a book on American witch trials, an americano, and a respectable IPA in one visit (I’m told I was among the first to complete the holy trinity in one order). I sat at one of the pew-like benches on the ground floor, reading my new acquisition in the soft yellow light. Waiting for my drink, I felt the guilt subside. Though I’d again strayed past my spending limit, I at least had a reason to slow down and take in my surroundings. The jazz-funk, folk and R&B on the stereo makes the wait a nice one, a far cry from the clatter and hiss of Blackwell’s built-in Café Nero.

With large bay windows and a confined interior, it’s clear that Gulp Fiction is built on a retail lot. There should be mannequins in these windows rather than hip students. As I sit in the chair and sip at my beer, I consider the effect this has had on the space. It limits the amount of seating inside, driving many to the Covered Market’s communal benches in front of the shop. It also means that only one wall has room for books. This limits the offering but heightens that sense of personal curation, and ramps up the dopamine hit of finding a rarer book. The space feels neither like the larger bookstores on Broad Street nor the coffee shops in the rest of the market. It is a strange hybrid, but it works. The shop feels small, creating the sense that you are interacting with something local, rather than a global conglomerate. The coffee, when it arrived, seemed an affirmation of that: a little bit of warmth on a Sunday in March.

The arrival of a wine menu only makes things warmer. House wine is served in three sizes, for students looking to bring out their inner Hemingway. Wine and literature are an even more natural pairing, one that I’ll fail to resist. Wine, beer, coffee and a book sounds like my kind of study session. Still, Gulp Fiction’s license limits meant I was unable to take beer to the outdoor tables last time I went. Wine drinkers, beware: you may face the same problem.

Either because of the welcoming staff or (more likely) because of the coffee-plus-book meal-deal, I’ve found myself circling back to Gulp Fiction. As I become something of a regular, the books I pick grow ever stranger. The works sold as part of the deal are often ones I wouldn’t go for, but I end up taking them just for the coffee. Coffee, an indelible part of my routine and survival, has become a means of broadening my horizons. Books I wouldn’t have touched with a tentpole seem all the more appealing as a side dish, a literary Biscoff wedged against the china. The table is positioned with devilish strategy, right next to the till. This is every bit as cruel as the bright chewing gum, ELF bars and porno mags at a newsagent’s desk. The queue slows to a crawl. The table is right in front of me. You already have three books. A cover catches my eye. A title. You already have three books. Didn’t Mark recommend that? Look. It’s up for the Booker Prize! You already have three books. You already have three books. My heart pounds. My palms sweat. I visualize my bank balance, my stacked shelves, the coffee already in my system. You already have—it’s futile. I grab a book on mushroom mycelia and ask, as penance, for a chamomile tea. As usual, I take my seat. I flip through. And just like that, I’m hooked on mycelia.

The deal has reached cyberspace, too. Gulp Fiction’s website lists books that can be bought online and delivered to your home address. If you pick the books on the offer, you’ll be provided a bookmark to trade in for a free coffee. Though I despair at this news, it could be very convenient for day-trippers.

Gulp Fiction is the kind of bookstore whose reputation grows in a crystalline manner, egged on by word-of-mouth. The sense that it is a rare find, bound to collapse as influencers traipse through Oxford and the owners push their TikTok, means that I am compelled to tell every friend who will listen. Though a new arrival, it is steadily growing its crowd of devotees. From what I have spotted, most are students in their college puffers. Gulp Fiction is a place where, on the pretext of study, they can find something marginally warmer than libraries and student rooms. Its owners understand that as an independent bookstore in Oxford, you can’t offer a more extensive collection than Blackwell’s or the Bodleian. Instead, you offer something smaller, and therefore more prized.

A pinch of Jazz doesn’t hurt, either. Gulp Fiction’s ace in the hole is its weekly Sunday concerts. Local bands, students and professors play cozy gigs inside. These attract a reasonable crowd: large enough to fill the collection bucket, but small enough to keep things intimate. The music is good, too. The classically educated musicians avoid too cerebral a concert, keeping their riffs groovy and light. There’s no lulling to sleep here, no need to order your expresso double. With bands varying from week to week, it’s yet another reason to drop in and spend an hour and a tenner. Oxford has lost some of its most valuable indie music venues in recent years: I only hope Gulp Fiction’s jazz afternoons hail a revival, even if the snug vibe is a far cry from the sweat-and-smoke raves of yesteryear.

The events also bring a touch of liveliness to the venue. Though we value quiet and calm in our bookstores, these are overabundant qualities in Oxford. Oxford’s calm is its blessing and its curse, synonymous both with its achievements and its stubborn, glacial attitude to change. It is easy to sleepwalk through the city, treading its sacred stones, restating the same anecdotes, dreaming, as its students do, of leaving a mark. A weekly gig might be a welcome break from the contemplative silence that elsewhere reigns supreme.

If its atmosphere gets full marks, Gulp Fiction’s selection of books has room for improvement. Wider Travel and Art sections would be welcome, not least in such a wayfaring and culturally-minded city. It’s surprising to see the History & Biography sections shrink, too, given the abundance of humanities students in the area. Parents won’t find a lot for young children, either. Still, none of these qualms offset the charm of Gulp Fiction. Besides, there are benefits to its slim selection. No Jeremy Clarkson, no Prince Harry, no Boris Johnson…some absences are more welcome than others.

Any bookworm owes themselves a pilgrimage to Blackwell’s and the university libraries, as well as a walk to and stumble from Tolkien’s favourite pubs. However, Gulp Fiction may be the best option off the beaten track. Not yet swarmed by students and tourists, it has the gentle calm of all the best bookstores. Its jazz sessions admirably uphold Oxford’s longstanding musical tradition, putting local talent on centre stage. If nothing else, the coffee-and-book deal compounds two indulgences into one. It encourages you to slow down and take in the city’s atmosphere, palpable even under the Covered Market’s roof. That alone is something you won’t quite get in Blackwell’s Café Nero, and reason enough to splash out on that bird-watching book.