6th of May Bank Holiday

On Monday we’re planning to be open from 11am  until at least 4pm (if we have customers we will remain open until 6). If you are planning to bring donations after 4pm, please ring to check that we’re still open.

In the meantime we’ve got the most lovely copy of Tom Tit by Ismay Thorn. The cover is a slightly garish turquoise with a red, blue and gilt  illustration. It is the internal illustrations, however, that really make this book. They are drawn by M. Irwin (who the internet suggests may be Madelaine Irwin) and feature little events in the lives of the family in the book. They are incredibly simple but wonderfully suggestive of childhood and an earlier time. Although this book is out of copyright and available very cheap from a variety of sources but there is nothing quite like the paper and card version!

 

May Book Group!

This month our book group book is The Bridge by Iain Banks. With Iain Banks being so much in the news this month, it seemed only fitting that he should be our next book selection. I’ve never read any of his books but I am assured by several of my volunteers that he is brilliant (and weird in a good way!).  The Bridge is an unconventional love story which follows a single protagonist presented as three different characters. Iain Banks himself, cites this as his favourite of his own novels so it should be interesting to see what people think.

We’ll be meeting at 7.30pm on the 21st of May in the shop. Tea and coffee will be provided but you fancy something a little stronger please bring your own.

We don’t require any committment so if you don’t fancy this book or you’re not available this month you can always come next time.

Questions and suggestions for our next book are always welcome.

Book Bugs – the aftermath

The first week of April was a chaotic one for us. Not only were we all recovering from over-indulging at Easter, we were thrust into a new financial year (with all the boring organising that entails) and we were running Oxfam Book Bugs, our first attempt at a children’s book festival.  I say ‘we’ but really the vast majority was being done by our lovely volunteer, Charlotte, whose idea Book Bugs was.

 

The events themselves were great fun (and I’m sure the kids who came enjoyed them as well) and it was lovely to see authors (and other creative types) give their time and enthusiasm so willingly. Of course the most important thing to us was the money that we raised as we are now able to help more children around the world who don’t have access to things like education and reading materials. And thanks to the wonderful Angelica Tales we also have a fridge full of green jelly! We can’t wait to get planning for similar things next year…

April Book Group!

This month our book group book is Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. 

Obviously this is a modern classic but it’s also one of those books that slips between the gaps in people’s reading lists. There seems little point in rambling on about what an excellent work of satire this book is (although you can find all that stuff here). Instead I’ll give you this review from Amazon:

“Look, you’re a smart person. You know what you like and what you don’t like. Unless of course you say you liked this book. In which case I rescind my first statement. Just because some art freak with oily skin and a funny hat says a book is good, doesn’t make it an American classic. For lack of a better word, this book sucked.”

(so I guess if everyone hates it at least we’re in good company!)

We’ll be meeting at 7.30pm on the 18th of April in the shop. Tea and coffee will be provided but you fancy something a little stronger, bring your own.

We don’t require any committment so if you don’t fancy this book or you’re not available this month you can always come next time.

Questions and suggestions for our next book are always welcome.

Easter!

Our opening hours for next weekend are as follows:

Friday 29th March: CLOSED

Saturday 30th March: 10am – 6pm

Sunday 31st March: CLOSED

Monday 1st April: CLOSED

Tuesday 2nd April: 10am – 6pm

As always, it is advisable during this time to ring ahead if you plan to bring donations to the shop. Our shop relies on the kindness of volunteers to open and we may find opurselves closing unexpectedly.

Enjoy the break!

A list

We found this list being used as a bookmark:

• Hairy back!
• Stories about exes and not always respectful about them
• Essex accent
• Never checked I got home OK
• Podgy
• Unsettled
• Self-centred
• Way too many female friends = Gay!?
• Just not that into me (rude the morning after)

A whole short story on a tiny square of paper.

Even more dispatches from the world of bookselling

In the interest of discrection this post is illustrated by an irrelevant photo of a cat.

Today we received an unusual delivery – three Amazon book boxes addressed to ‘Oxfam’. These turned out to contain three brand-new (plastic-wrapped!) copies of a single work of fiction. We are always grateful for any donations we receive but this seems a little oddd. The dispatch note from Amazon informed that this was a gift from the author, sugesting that someone was not only trying to further our cause but also keen to have their books read. This isn’t so noteworthy in itself,  writers have been trying to get book sellers to take their books for centuries, but it does seem to be part of a change we have noticed in the donations we’re receiving. Increasingly, we’re finding (often tucked into bags of other books) multiple copies of self-published books. There could be any number of reasons for this but I like to think it’s something to do with the growing profile of self-publishing (obviously 50 Shades of Grey is the classic example) and the actual difficulty that people experience in selling their self-published books (no matter how good it is, any book needs a huge amount of publicity). Perhaps this is too cynical an outlook and all we are seeing is an upswing in generous donations. Either way, we now have a much more esoteric selection of books available!