Musings

  • A diamond has been hiding in plain sight

    By Anna Johnson, 2024 Unraveller – Frances Hardinge A diamond has been hiding in plain sight on the shelves of the Red Lion bookshop and I must sheepishly admit that I was late in noticing it.  I’ve just emerged from the world of Unraveller, and it was enthrallingly imagined, intricately plotted and heart wrenchingly humane. As a child, Nettle is cursed to spend her life as a bird, a lonely heron. Kellen, an Unraveller, releases her from this fate and she becomes his companion, and moral compass. In Raddith, the ability to curse is a gift granted by the ‘Little Brothers’, […]

  • This is your shop

    We received the following message from a young customer who was recently won the ‘Top Young Reporter of the Year’ award.  Congratulations Rosie It’s Rosie, I’m not sure if you remember me but wrote an article about the shop last Autumn. I was lucky enough to win Top Young Reporter of the Year and also received awards for some of my articles, including my interview with you! I just wanted to say a huge thank you for being so helpful and inviting last year. Your article was by far the one I most enjoyed writing! Thank you again! Rosie Gray https://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/23134406.its-shop—rosie-gray-colchester-sixth-form/ (I’ve […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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, […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]