Musings
A collection of stories, thoughts and news
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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)
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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| Musings
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
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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
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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
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| Musings
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
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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