Hello, it is I, your manic sticky pixie book dream enabler and this is the next update live from the bookshop.
As a ten-week-aversary of this feature, I’m coming to you live on a Saturday for the first time. More a treat for you than for me, working on a Saturday for the fist time in at least ten weeks. Business partner/Mum is on holiday. Well, somebody has to be.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that manning a bookshop in the centre of a seaside town on the hottest weekend of the year would mean there’d simply be no time to also continuously be writing a live bulletin for a handful of (beloved) subscribers in a newsletter that almost no one reads, but you’d be wrong. Both because I’ll make it my absolute priority to get it done, and also because we don’t actually get that many customers, even on a Saturday… in the centre of a seaside town… on the hottest weekend of the year.
These posts will remain free, with comments open so you can send me queries like ‘When do you get your Christmas books out?’1 and ‘Where’s your mum gone?2’
The first customer of the day has come to collect an order: Black Panther: The Young Prince - a Marvel book. Readers of a few weeks ago will remember my quest to find the unstoppable marble book; this book is for the same customer, who has been so delighted that mum discovered these marble Marvel books, she’s brought her a gift to say thank you!! - It’s a box of William Morris soaps, disguised as a book! Aren’t people lovely?
Second customer is also expecting Business Mum to be here. I’m going to be disappointing people all day. But I’m not the only disappointing feature today; this weekend is the International Kite Festival - a fabulous annual event that attracts loads of visitors to our beautiful beaches. Unfortunately, it’s fallen on a stiflingly hot weekend in which there is Not A Breath of Wind, which is a phrase I’ll hear about 37 times this morning, before l give in and start saying it myself. Not! A! Breath! of! Wind!
For the bookshop, the Kite Festival can mean a quiet weekend. All the visitors who’ve come into town for the festival probably won’t venture this far, there being plenty of shops and restaurants that are immediately visible from the beach side, tourists don’t often make it to this side of the square. So it’s probably fine that I didn’t go out of my way to install a kite-themed window display, which really would only contain multiple copies of that deeply harrowing kite book (is it even about kites?), and maybe an actual kite that wouldn’t be for sale, anyway.
A lady comes in to pick up a copy of Where the Crawdads Sing3 - she’s going on a 34 day arctic cruise! Departing Monday! She got it on a last minute deal for £2K instead of £10K+! A balcony cabin! Including drinks package! The exclamation marks are all mine, she was very understated about it. Anyway, one of the onboard book clubs is reading Crawdads. Imagine being in a book club, on a boat, in the arctic, under the Northern Lights. #Retirementgoals.
I want something special today.
A tiny boy in yellow wellies who understands that joy is not made to be a crumb.
Extremely loyal customer, and reader of this newsletter, KMcD comes into the shop to collect her 30th Anniversary edition of The Secret History, which she found out about by reading this very newsletter. Personal oversight as a bookseller there, that I did not make her directly aware of this edition - she’s been reading the same paperback copy since adult fiction cost £5.99. She reads it every year, in fact. Her copy is doing well - binding intact and no loose pages. See photo!
I ask if she’ll read the new copy and we agree that the paperback is for reading and the hardback is for owning. We chat about the enduring appeal of The Secret History, and how it gave us both Great Expectations of a glamorous academic life that did not come to fruition. I even went to a small, fairly mysterious university, and did a course that only accepted ten students. Not even once, was I invited to a bacchanal. Rude.
11.23: It’s raining. Just to add insult to the breathless injury of a kite festival on an infuriatingly still day, it’s now also wet. The audacity of straight-down rain! A few people are still filing past the bookshop - ready to Beach as hard as they can. That’s the St. Annes spirit… damp, but not dampened!
Oh, I think I can just order that on Amazon and get it delivered to home. Thanks for looking.
11.43: Time for tea and some rifling through the post that has come in this week:
How I Won A Nobel Prize by Julius Taranto sounds pretty tempting - ‘a young physicist finds herself exiled to an island research institute that gives safe harbour to ‘cancelled’ artists and academics'.’ Ok!
I’ve also got a proof of Wellness by Nathan Hill which also sounds great, but is a bit of a whopper, which creates reluctance on my part to actually start reading it, but then also improves the chance that I’ll really fall hard for it if/when I do. The Perpetual Big Book Conundrum.
I’ve got a proof of The Women by Kristin Hannah, which let’s face it, I’m definitely not going to read, but will definitely be of interest to customers. No shade to Kristin Hannah, I believe the blurbs that this book is ‘a novel of searing insight and lyrical beauty… profoundly emotional and richly drawn.’ Look, if you like Powerful and Compelling International Bestsellers by Master Storytellers, this is the book for you.
But, squeal, here’s a book for me: Piglet by Lottie Hazell, which was sent to me with a box full of ingredients to make Pasta Alla Puttanesca, so I can go method when I read it. Huge thanks to Vicky Palmer at Doubleday for hooking me up with the goodies! This one sounds delicious.
And I’ll certainly be looking out for Out There Screaming - An Anthology of New Black Horror, edited by Jordan Peele. My info sheet tells me there’s a swanky Collector’s Edition with printed boards and spredges - digitally signed by Peele and Contributors. Nice present for a horror fan! I’ve got a sampler with a story by N. K. Jemisin called ‘Reckless Eyeballing’, which is a very good title.
I was going to go in there the other day.
Someone who obviously still hasn’t made it over the threshold. Any day now. We live in hope.
A man comes in to enquire about the new Stephen King. He went to WHSmith first but they “haven’t unpacked the stock yet” (on a Saturday afternoon? of a book that came out on Tuesday?).
“I can order you one if you like”, I offer, “but it’s £25.”
“Ah, it’s £12.50 in Smiths,” he says.
“That’s why we haven’t got it here,” I tell him.
He understands. I think we’re both sad about it.
12.45: SUNSHINE! *licks a finger and holds it up for some reason* …NO WIND!
A lady who was in this morning buying a copy of Alison by Lizzy Stewart , for her sister (Alison) pops back in to tell me she’d started reading it herself, over lunch in a nearby cafe. “It’s brilliant. I love it!” I think this is about the fourth time I’ve mentioned Alison in this newsletter so I won’t go on about why you should read it again. However, I am delighted to update our customers here that we’re hosting
in a book club event at the end of the month. I can’t wait!!It’s just flying, isn’t it?
Someone presumably talking about Time, and not A Kite.
I shouldn’t buy a book today, because I already bought Grimwood Book 3 to read with my daughter this week, and then I got You Could Make This Place Beautiful by viral poet and Substack celebrity
, which I started last night, and am enjoying immensely; Vignettes! - my favourite cutlery. Poetry! - my favourite vegetable. Meta! - my favourite meat. An irresistible meal of a book.But today I feel strangely drawn to this small hardback by Jo Ann Beard, Cheri, even though it includes cancer in the synopsis, and personally that’s I’d-Rather-Not content for me. But something about this slim little volume is urging me to read it. And because I’m me, also the Collected Works of Jo Ann Beard, which matches this edition. Jo Ann Beard is a writer I’ve never read, so why not start with everything?
Everyone who comes into the (empty) shop wants to tell me how busy it is out there. “St. Annes Beach is swarming with people.” “It’s never been so busy!”
Obviously there’s no swarming in the bookshop. It remains silent in the shade, and cooler than the immediate outside. Phew. I make a cup of tea and text a beach friend for a kite update. They’re ‘up and down’.
SIX people in the shop right now. Is six a swarm!? I think six is a swarm. Some of them even bought short stories and poetry, swarmily.
Person outside A: Bookshop???
Person outside B: No.
It’s time to cash up for the day - decent takings! Definitely some kite tourists included, and brave locals who came out even though there was not a single parking space to be had in the whole town. I’m off to see some kites now! Whether they’ll be in the air remains to be seen. No seriously, where are they, I can’t see them…
You can support my bricks and mortar bookshop by buying your books via this link, and you can support me as a writer by taking out a paid sub to this Substack, which gives you access to my most recent posts on Copenhagen and LOL - Lee Child!
Christmas.
Scotland.
In looking for the purchase link for this book I’ve also discovered there’s a Collectors Hardback Edition of this book? And a … jigsaw?
I'm so impressed that KMcD has kept her copy of The Secret History so intact after all those reads... I bought my copy in around 2000, have read it twice and my boyfriend read it once and it's completely falling apart! What did I do to it?! I will probably just have to buy that handsome new edition when I next want to reread it, I guess...!
I think The Secret History collectively set all our expectations too high for university life. And yet I have the fantasy that I could live out that life if I wanted to? That it is in fact a matter of choice that I haven’t been to a bacchanal, not lack of opportunity.