coddie

  • Eyes on the Prize

    At this  time of year, we have a gaggle of students popping into the shop, each clutching one of our tokens, which they’ve been awarded as a school prize.  We like to play a little game here at Red Lion Books by trying to guess what subject the student won their prize for, based on the book they’ve chosen. Occasionally we get it right and feel very smug about ourselves, but the most interesting occasions are when the book is a proper leftfield choice. One that appears to be getting a lot of traction at the moment, and here’s where the politics bit comes […]

  • Eye of Boudica Event at Red Lion Books

      The Eye is all-seeing, all-consuming, always being watched and judged for good or bad actions. Big Brother is Watching you, as Orwell said. People correct themselves when they’re aware an eye is on them. Crime decreases, and people clean up their acts, behaving themselves as the ever-present Eye observes them closely. It makes sense why the Eye of Boudica is named such and why their symbol is a fiery eye watching you. The Eye of Boudica came to Red Lion Books in May to give a Standing up to Harassment Course. The Colchester-based movement and organisation wanted to provide women […]

  • April 2022, We’ve got it covered

    It’s the end of April.  I’m writing that opener almost like it’s a slightly bewildered revelation rather than a statement of fact. A third of the way through my bookshop year and it hardly feels like a week has passed, let alone all the seconds and minutes I’ve spent at the coalface of indie bookselling. There is a kind of soothing aura of calm that permeates a bookshop. Like sitting on the wooden steps of a groyne-lined beach listening to the waves gently ripple over shingle, while staring far off into the distance. This month on the beach I caught sight […]

  • Meeting Ben Aaronovitch

    A blog post from Louise, our ‘newest and youngest’ member of staff’.   Friday the 8th of April, 2022, was my first time working an event for Red Lion Books, and it was a biggie.  The first book in the Rivers of London series, aptly titled Rivers of London, came out when I was 11, so Ben Aaronovitch is a name I have heard for half of my life. Now, in 2022, eleven years later, book 9 of the series, Amongst our Weapons, was being released, and Red Lion Books was part of it. The event was an author talk, with Ben […]

  • The Marmalade Diaries author event

    I’m writing this post with a bit of a fuzzy head – although the marmalade is helping.  There were a lot of inspiring things that came out of Ben Aitken’s talk last night, one of which was reminding me of the restorative effects of a good old-fashioned piece of toast with marmalade on it.  The marmalade came courtesy of Wilkin and Sons, purveyors of preserves to her majesty, a sweet (sorry) gesture from the company which also served up as a visual aid to Ben’s extended metaphor for the tiny pots of sunshine.  Marmalade on toast was the routine daily event […]

  • March ramblings

    And so, March leaves us like a lamb, or so the phrase goes. Although in Indie bookshop-land, it’s been a little the other way around with a quiet, genteel period of activity at the start of the month and then a flurry towards the end. Some of that was down to Mothers’ Day, a difficult time for me as I lost my own dear Mum last October. She loved the fact I had got a job in a bookshop – ‘right up your street’ – she said to me when I told her. I was trying to remember what her favourite book […]

  • Keir Starmer visit

    I Photo credit: Colchester Gazette Blog post by Louise Prior (newest and youngest Red Lion Books Team member).   He arrived around fifteen minutes past eleven. I wasn’t on the top floor when Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party, came into Red Lion Books but downstairs organising the TikTok Book Recommendation display. Since our opening that morning at 9 am, this particular store section drew many customers. We had sold ‘Reminders of Him‘ by Colleen Hoover, a cheery sounding book titled ‘They Both Die at the End‘ by Adam Silvera, and a few others from our TikTok shelves, leaving gaps […]

  • Francis Spufford and his Light Perpetual

    Daytime book club is back and we were thrilled to have Francis Spufford as our guest, discussing Light Perpetual. Book club member, Paul Burns, shares his thoughts. We were gathered in the bar area of the Three Wise Monkeys, looking at each other and chatting and wondering what he’d look like! And then there he was, at the door, Francis Spufford himself, author of Golden Hill and, more recently, Light Perpetual, the novel he had come to talk about, to us, eager Red Lion Book Club readers! We bundled down narrow stairs in to what was billed as the Gin Cellar, thick pillars, dimly-lit […]

  • Essex Year of Reading & Toto the Cat

    Essex County Council launched their Year of Reading and asked Red Lion Books to supply books to St Thomas More’s Primary School, ahead of Dermot O’Leary (former X Factor host) visiting the school. “Yes“, we said. Set up by the Essex Education Taskforce, the Year of Reading is a £1million project aimed at encouraging children and adults to read regularly and former Colchester schoolboy Dermot O’Leary was a popular choice to launch it, providing a storytelling session from the 5th instalment of his series, Toto the Ninja Cat, encouraging pupils to take part in the scheme. When his schedule took him […]

  • What brings you here?

    Is it Lemn Sissay saying ‘Hourglass will stay with me for a long time?’ Did he tempt you? Or perhaps it’s Hollie McNish? ‘A book for anyone who ever has been or ever will be heartbroken. So that’s everyone‘. Maybe it is Max Porter saying, ‘This book glows in the heart of the reader‘. Or is it the book cover? Do you judge a book by its gold foiled lettering? Perhaps you find a slim, hardback novel both achievable and appealing? Hourglass ticks visual boxes with aesthetic repetition of the letters h, o, u, r, g, l, a, s, s  forming an […]