Musings
A collection of stories, thoughts and news
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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