Musings
A collection of stories, thoughts and news
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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
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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
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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
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First Impressions
It’s cold. I mean really cold. Three, sometimes, four layers cold. It was one of the things that was brought to my attention when I had my interview for the post of bookseller way back in June last year. “It gets warm in the summer and pretty cold in the winter.” “I mean how cold can cold be”, I thought. Turns out pretty cold. I probably should stop going on about the temperature, especially as I can imagine Jo, the manager here at Red Lion, reading over the first draft of this new column and saying it’s not exactly encouraging people to
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Completing the jigsaw puzzle
Somebody today, asked what a typical day at the book shop looked like and we realised there is no typical day. We start off with grand plans to ‘tidy up’, which generally means, ‘make more mess’. We always hoover and water the plants and then we usually have a grand plan. The grand plan today was to gather all the jigsaw puzzles up and display them in the window but then our daily delivery of books arrived. Each book has to be treated with consideration. Has it arrived in good condition? Does it need pricing? Is it ready to be goods
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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
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Silent Spring: a book that made a big noise.
Books are important in so many ways. They can move us, thrill us and entertain us. They can also inform and educate us. ‘Silent Spring’ is one of the most influential books ever to have been published. It kick-started the environmental movement worldwide and established a publishing genre of science writing aimed at the widest of markets. It seemed to be in everyone’s bookshelves as I was growing up, a book that influenced a generation and then continued to influence following generations. Cop 26 has just finished in Glasgow and now our environmental concerns are very different. In 1962, when ‘Silent
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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
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An Event to celebrate ‘The Testaments’ launch
This was a truly memorable event for us and also for those who attended. Two indie bookshops were chosen by her publishers, Vintage (with input from Margaret Atwood herself) to launch The Testaments in the UK. We were chosen on the strength of our idea for customers to have their anonymous testaments read by an actor (dressed as a Handmaiden). It was a brilliant and moving event, as blogged here https://www.heroica.co/entertainment/review-a-night-in-gilead
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What is this ‘Under Wraps’?!
It all started with ‘Jolaokaflod’! This is an Icelandic term, translating to ‘Christmas book flood’ and is used to describe books that are gifted on Christmas Eve. At Red Lion Books we gift-wrapped a book we hoped our customers would love and sold it in the run-up to Christmas. Its purchase came with rules: It had to be a gift to yourself It had to be opened on Christmas Eve You couldn’t post it on social media More on this in an earlier blog! We had so much fun with the idea that we decided to offer
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Limericks
As booksellers who love real books printed on paper the advent of e-books has not been a welcome development. And the Kindle in particular as it binds users into a certain dominant online retailer. Here’s a couple of anti-Kindle limericks which I hope may cause a smile. A spy novel lover called Jane Found her Kindle it drove her insane For the battery failed as the spy was unveiled. Now she’s back reading real books again! A lass of a ‘certain age’ Stamped on her Kindle in rage. For it wouldn’t display ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ Now she’s back
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Books Made Of Paper
A paper book is a wondrous thing No batteries are needed You can shelve it for a hundred years Then take it down and read it. You can read it in the bath tub You can read it on the train You can read it when the sun is bright You can read it in the rain. It needs no wires or charging No cables and no socket It’s soft and flexible enough To stuff it in your pocket! You can scribble in the margins From the first page to the end. You can write a message in
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Out of This World
Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, George Orwell, Doris Lessing, Jonathan Swift. What have these writers got in common? One answer is that they are all writers of science fiction…..yet none would feature in most lists of science fiction writers and in bookshops and libraries you are unlikely to find them in the science fiction section. In popular culture science fiction and its cousin, fantasy has long been big brand, big budget entertainment from Dr Who and Star Trek to Lord of the Rings and George R R Martin’s Game of Thrones. Yet in the book review section of most newspapers science fiction
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World Book Day Books and children of fathers in prison
As enthusiastic supporters of World Book Day we are involved with several local schools and always tend to order too many copies of each yearly crop of fantastic WBD titles. After all, the last thing we ever want to do is to run out! It does mean that after the dust has settled on the WBD events we are always left with extra stock. We have found some good uses for them over the years but the latest is maybe the best – a link with the local library service who take books into prisons. For children, the occasional visit to