Event Musings

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • Say it with books

    There’s something rather lovely leaving the shop when it’s still light. I’ll probably say the same thing when it starts to get dark, come November, when there’s the first signs of the orange street-light glow. But for now, Spring is on its way and love is very much in the air. There’s always a lot of love when it comes to working in a bookshop. You can see people punch drunk with pleasure, ambling among the shelves, wistfully looking at covers and spines promising them escapist trips to somewhere that isn’t here. Except here is where they want to be. That’s what they […]

  • A Terrible Kindness

    FACT: Warm, generous, wise authors can take you to terrible places; talented authors ensure you return home.   A TERRIBLE KINDNESS proves it. Pre-publication, our wonderful Indie Alliance rep, Rosy, brought a proof copy to Red Lion Books saying, “This. You need to read this and you need to take my word for it because I don’t want the subject matter to put you off”.  When the subject is the 1966 Aberfan landslide you react.  You either walk away or you trust in the power of words.  The right words, written by the right author,  can guide you through unimaginable situations in […]

  • The Insatiable Queen B

    Red Lion Books met Daisy Buchanan at the EA Festival last year https://www.eafestival.com/ and instantly hit it off – finding a mutual love of bookshops, Margate and Jilly Cooper. Let me clarify, this wasn’t F.Scott Fitzgerald’s Daisy incarnate.  No, this was the very much alive Daisy: award winning writer, columnist, broadcaster, and author of non-fiction How To Be A Grown Up and The Sisterhood and more recently Insatiable and Careering. Alive and a lot of fun so we were thrilled when she agreed to have an event with us. The strap line for this event was ‘You will know if this […]

  • Nicholas Jubber returns to Red Lion Books

    Never underestimate the gratitude that an author has for their readership (and the booksellers) who champion their work. On a cold January evening, Nicholas (Nick) Jubber travelled all the way from Dorset to speak with Red Lion Books – here in Essex – about his new book; THE FAIRY TELLERS (Published 20th January, Hachette).   He politely requested a cup of tea before settling into our ‘Author’s Chair’ where he entranced us with the stories behind the stories. Who wrote the fairy tales that have been told and retold for centuries? In this far-ranging quest, award-winning author Nick has unearthed the lives […]

  • Robin Ince at Red Lion Books

    Is he a stand-up comic, actor or radio presenter; a writer, or explorer of the human condition, is he a science communicator or a poet? Well, this is Robin Ince and he is all of these things and more. This afternoon he arrived at Red Lion Books to talk to our customers about his new book, ‘The Importance of Being Interested’. When I say talk…. let me explain. He said he would talk for about 40 minutes and then take questions. What happened was that an hour went by during which he hardly drew breath.  In that hour, we were taken […]