coddie

  • Hunger Games comeback – is this the Dystopian Renaissance?

    By Regina Lopez Puerta When I opened my phone yesterday, I felt I was transported all the way back to 2013. Suddenly, I was back in my childhood bedroom, a mockingjay pin on my jacket, Katniss posters all over my wall, scrolling through billions of fan theories about this fascinating world; and it was all triggered by an important piece of news. The new Hunger Games film has released its teaser trailer and poster. Based on the prequel set 64 years before the original novels, A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes follows the story of a young Coriolanus Snow before he […]

  • Anna reviews This Family by Kate Sawyer

        This Family by Kate Sawyer It’s a new beginning. She should be happy. And she is. She is. But where there are beginnings, there are always endings too.’ I enjoyed Kate Sawyer’s first novel The Stranding, a powerful reimagining of the end of the world but I loved her most recent novel, This Family. Here she kicks back and settles into what she’s really good at – the nitty gritty of family life. We love our families but we often despair of them too, and it’s this nexus of joy and pain that Sawyer explores with warmth and humour, […]

  • Local poet, Ricci Read, preaches

    Being a poet is a lifestyle. It is a commitment to being your rebellious, authentic self. I preach that poetry shouldn’t follow any rules! I hope to inspire others to find and use their voice to tell their own stories. Of course, it can be fun to write a haiku or a sonnet. It can also be worthwhile playing with rhymes schemes and alliteration. But do not let academic ideals hold you back. You do not need to write certain stanzas in a certain order for it to be a poem. You need only to bare your soul. A poem to […]

  • Daisy Jones & The Six: It Could’ve Been Great

      For a book whose central conflict lies around being good vs being great, that emphasises the need to make history with one’s art,  the new series falls short of that. Don’t get me wrong, the screen adaptation is perfectly good, and that is exactly why it fails. Because it could’ve been great.  I did not want to write a “the book is better than the movie” review, because I really hoped the adaptation would ace it, but unfortunately it did not.  Taylor Jenkins Reid has become a powerhouse when it comes to writing books that appeal to the new generation […]

  • When authors recommend other authors

    Blog note:  Author Kate Worsley has kindly provided Red Lion Books with a list of books that inspired her latest novel ‘Foxash‘, from ‘Fenwomen‘, a feminist Akenfield, to ‘Love on the Dole”s 1930s Salford.  Foxash is published on 27th April and will be launched in Manningtree that evening. Book here     FOXASH Kate’s recommended reading list Adrian Bell’s Corduroy 1930 trilogy (Faber and Faber, 2011): the arch example of urban middle-class longing for the countryside: a full-throated threnody for vanishing rural ways. (blog note: this title is no longer available but we suggest Men & The Fields as an alternative) […]

  • To read or not to read?

    Blog note:  Author Regina Lopez Puerta’s first language is Spanish, not English. This is why we have retained the American spelling of realised   Incidentally, Regina will be hosting Spanish classes at Red Lion Books. Please email us@redlionbooks.co.uk for more information.   There’s a piece of advice my Dad gave me when I was little and it’s stuck with me ever since “If you’re not enjoying the book you’re reading, drop it. Life is too short to read bad books.” I’ve lived by those words ever since, and 40 pages into a very popular novel whose name shall not be named, […]

  • A new book club on the block (Jo interviewing Louise & Regina about YA titles)

      Hello Louise. Hello Regina , this is going to be fun, interviewing my lovely colleagues. How are you both today? Regina: Hi Jo! It’s great to talk to you, we’re very excited to share great news with our customers. Louise: I’m great today, Jo and super excited to be doing this interview   Could you say how you ended up working with us at Red Lion Books? Louise: I come from Clacton and have worked for Red Lion Books since February 2022. The day I got the interview for the job was my birthday, so I often call my job […]

  • Guest blog from regular customer Chris Coates

      “I asked the doctor to take my fingers off; he refused, so I pulled them off myself and felt absolutely no pain in doing it”. I suppose it’s inevitable that as a middle-aged man I’ve started reading military history, but I’ll say this for Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart’s Happy Odyssey: I don’t think it’s typical of the genre. In a long career, Carton de Wiart was shot in the ankle, ear, face, head, hip, leg, and stomach, survived two plane crashes, escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp, and probably inspired the “fire-eating” Brigadier Ben Ritchie-Hook in Evelyn […]

  • Yale University Press, Bookshop of the month

    A Little History of Yale University Press London Yale University Press, founded in Connecticut in 1908, first established a marketing base in London in 1961, before going on to publish its own list of titles, alongside the books produced by its US head office, in 1973. Yale now has a unique position as the only American university press with a full-scale publishing operation in Europe Red Lion Books is thrilled to be chosen as their bookshop of the month! https://yalebooksblog.co.uk/?p=39333 Working closely with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the London office of Yale University Press quickly forged a […]

  • Back to School

    I’ve just had a conversation with Jo, the manager here at Red Lion, where the C word was mentioned. How is it not even the end of Summer and we’re talking about Christmas? But that’s how the pages turn in a bookshop, we’re always looking ahead. Whether it’s the new Kate Atkinson (Shrines of Gaiety), Stephen King (Fairy Tale), or, as she is known here in the shop, Queen Maggie (The Marriage Portrait), we’re always trying to second guess what is going to be on our customers’ must buy lists. For now, though, I’m still very much in Summer mode writing this […]