Bookshops make people happy. I’ve heard books can do this too, but bookshops are a mood improver in their own right, and this may or may not be connected to reading.

A YouGov poll commissioned by the Booksellers Association of the UK and Ireland and reported by The Bookseller attempts to quantify the effect. Nine in 10 people who visited a bookshop in the last six months say it improved their mood in the moment, while almost as many (84 per cent) say it had a positive impact on their overall wellbeing.

That’s all lovely, but it does make me wonder what happened to the one in 10 people whose mood either deteriorated or was resolutely unchanged by the experience. Things can go very wrong in bookshops, and we shouldn’t gloss over the trauma.

You can, for instance, bump into someone you know but whose name you can’t instantaneously remember, obliging you to swerve that particular establishment in perpetuity. You can indulge in a complacent browse of the nonfiction new releases only for a golf umbrella to come flying down the adjacent stairwell, its pointy end missing you by millimetres and giving you a fright you frankly weren’t expecting as you read the blurb on the latest Tom Holland.

You can lumber up one set of steps only to remember that the lone wall guide is down on the ground floor and you have no idea if there’s another flight of cruel steps to climb before you locate the music section. Or you can be delighted that the bookshop has the Mick Herron back-catalogue title you want, only to find its one copy has this tiny dealbreaker of a crease running across the top corner and that’s your day ruined.

I’m not saying these things have happened to me, but I’m not saying they haven’t either. Are bookshops really hellish places in disguise? I think it’s notable that the poll didn’t cover the Christmas-shopping frenzy, when you get the casuals exuding last-minute desperation as they enlist half the available sales assistants in a self-important quest for that book with a blue cover by that woman off that TV show – or was it a green cover?

But the answer is that, no, bookshops are not secret hellmouths masquerading as the home of the latest Barbara Kingsolver or William Boyd. They are places of joy, knowledge, respite and, ideally, armchairs.

The survey found that almost eight in 10 people said they helped them switch off from social media and screen time, while 72 per cent said visiting a bookshop or attending a bookshop event helped them feel better during difficult times.

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I’m fully on board with all of this. Bookshops, by design, are places of possibility, curiosity and vibrant colour, and that’s not down to the array of enticing tote bags. Some books are portals to other worlds, helping us escape our own. Others contain the answers to questions we didn’t even know we had. It should go without saying, but probably doesn’t, that if the Government’s mooted culture card for teenagers ever goes ahead, it should include an element reserved for spending in physical bookshops.

We might even read the books we buy. A previous survey commissioned by the trade body indicates that 93 per cent of people believe bookshops encourage reading. This sounds like too self-evident a truth to be polled, but I think there’s no harm checking.

One crime bookshops have been getting away with for years is their blatant role in incentivising the creation of “TBR” (to-be-read) piles. These hazards start off innocuously enough with just a few books on the bedside table, bookmarks protruding here and there, good intentions hovering in their vicinity.

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Soon they mutate into unwieldy towers of failure, becoming the literal manifestation of the gulf between how much of a reader we like to think we are and how much we actually are. They mushroom, taking over entire tables, sofas and rooms, destroying our equilibrium and destabilising our self-identities.

Over time the books in these piles yellow and fade, becoming less appealing as objects and reducing the chances that they will ever be anything other than stubbornly unread.

It’s a dichotomy that has attracted attention in recent years as we increasingly seek explanations for the many ways in which it is possible to disappoint ourselves. The act of reading is about concentration, commitment and empathy. The act of buying books is about acquisition, thrill-seeking and idealism. They are two completely different forms of entrancement.

Still, a little prune, a spot of lending or some strategic blindness to existing TBR piles should do the trick. Because I’m with the Booksellers Association: few pleasures are more potent than simply being in the company of new books. So, once more, with hope and loyalty cards. It’s the weekend, after all.