Hello, it is I, your Star Baker Bookseller and this is the next update live from the bookshop.
The winter sun is streaming into the bookshop this morning. I had to retake this morning’s shop selfie because the light was too good and I don’t like you in that way. It isn’t raining. It isn’t even very cold! I’m (temporarily) de-jacketing myself and (temporarily) flinging open the door and I’m absolutely ignoring that dark purple cloud in the distance. Let’s hope everyone’s ready to buy armfuls of books because for the first day this week they aren’t carrying an umbrella. Wave Your Hands In The Air Like You Just Don’t Care for the way online river shopping sites are trying to kill the high street…
These posts will remain free, with comments open so you can send me queries like ‘What are you hoping to sell most of today?’1 and ‘Did you bring an umbrella though, just in case?’2
Delighted to see the most recent purchase through our Bookshop.Org account was Daniel Mason’s North Woods - lucky you if you are the recipient! That was our book club choice in October and I loved it - I wrote about it/sort of reviewed it here.
Next month we’re reading Sheep’s Clothing by Celia Dale, so I’m hoping we’ll sell a few copies of that one today. You can buy one here, and join the discussion, here on Substack, at the end of the month if you’re a paid subscriber.
First two groups of customers in the shop turn out to be neighbours. They both buy excellent new hardbacks including the latest book in Benji Davies’ stunning Storm Whale series. Hoping the rest of their street calls in at some point today.
A baby in a pram is doing such lovely babbling I wonder why they don’t play this as the noise as the waiting music on telephone lines. Then another baby in a pram has a hacking cough and I change my mind about that being a good idea. Imagine trying to get through to book a dentist appointment and some baby is on the line. Awful. I’m sorry for what I said when that one baby was cute.
*to a baby* You’re always screaming when we come in here.
A lady asks if we ‘just sell envelopes’. We don’t sell envelopes at all, never being mind being a niche envelope-only emporium. ‘WHSmiths?’ I offer, pathetically. Am delighted when she says witheringly “they haven’t got what I need.” Yeah! When do they ever?? That shop WHSucks, amIright… I don’t say.
“Post Office??” I’m trying harder. I’m warming to her now and want to help her on her Just Envelope Quest and also to punish Smiths for being such a useless version of a shop that could potentially be so helpful in a town that people need to buy Just The Right Just-Envelopes, dammit! I love to bash Smiths because they once had a poster in their window that said they’d Price Match any other bookshop in town. As the town’s only other bookseller, it seemed like a direct attack. Jokes on them, we literally couldn’t buy our stock for the prices they charge. Anyway, we still buy our sellotape there.
I don’t do them hardbacks
A couple come into collect some orders, including this memoir by crime novelist Donna Leon. I’ve seen her name brandished across many books, it’s one of those logo names, printed bigger than the title of the book, but I’ve never seen a picture of Donna Leon until I just picked up this customer order now. Look at this incredibly cool cover photo! She looks so chic and stylish I’m almost tempted to read her memoir despite having never read any of her books. Apparently they’re all set in Italy which is why she looks like a Valentino nonna. I just checked her Wiki - she’s American, but now she lives la dolce vita.. in Switzerland. Absolute goals. Off to buy a red blazer and get a bob.
Sometimes, when you open a bookshop in the town you grew up in, teachers that you knew at school end up becoming dear customers that you call by their first names and their wives become your friends and they read your newsletter (Hello LD!) and they come into the shop to pick up their books and have a chat and you talk their ear off about your latest writing project because they’re kind enough to ask and they have a daughter who is also a writer and has a book out next year that just so happens to be the most hotly-anticipated, original and absorbing novel debut novel of 2024. Which is nice.
A man comes in to ask if my dog is here. She isn’t, because she’s a menace to (polite) society and can’t be trusted not to guard all the doorways and bark at people who just want to try and buy books and/or enquire about envelopes. But other dogs are very welcome in the shop, and I met a lovely dog here this morning called Lucy who had fabulous highlights and felt like satin under her chin.
SUBSTACKER IN THE SHOP ALERT!!! It’s only the fabulous Claire from my favourite beauty newsletter
here with her gorgeous family. Even though I’m slightly concerned my mascara has suddenly escaped off my eyelashes and is coursing its way down my face, oh help, we have a lovely chat and the bookshop does not embarrass me and even has the decency to have another customer in it at the same time. I tell Claire about how I’m constantly surprised when it turns out that everyone I thought existed entirely inside my computer turn out to be real people who can walk into my shop and she’s gracious enough not to look at me like I’m mad. She also buys books. An A+ IRL encounter.Looks nice that shop.
Yeah, dead nice.
What is it?
Business Mum appears on her day off to bring me some milk (and lunch!) on her way back from visiting my Gran. Even though it’s definitely her day off she tries to talk me through every customer order on the shelf including the ones that have been sat there for months so I distract her with My Big News which is that I, finally, finally, watched the first episode of Game of Thrones (she’s seen it all and loves it - I’ve seen none of it, until now). But why now? After all these years? Well, er…Winter is coming?
BTW, I cannot believe Boromir literally says Winter is coming in his first conversation in the first episode. I’ve spent years thinking this phrase that I’ve seen stuck to people’s cars is some cryptic plot point I’d have to sit through six series to understand. He said it twice in the first episode! And it wasn’t even like a coded threat, it was like…well, winter is coming. Anyway, shut up about Game of Thrones, already.
The rain came and the customers all went away. Had a cup of tea with the fresh milk. Thought about logging into my Dabble account to do a bit of NaNoWriMo but it seemed a bit too keen on my official not-writing day. Completed Instagram instead.
Few browsers between showers. Couple of book clubber’s picking up their November book. I look through a beautiful cookery book and wonder who I can buy it for.
Into the last hour now. It’s getting dark already and the air has turned cold. I’ve still got the door open because I’ve got a Heattech on under my jumper… under my jacket… but my fingers are feeling the chill now. I can never bring myself to wear gloves in the shop; too Fagan. It’s always about this time I remember a task that Business Mum has asked me to complete that I promptly forget about. Today, she asked me to come up with some ideas for November’s Crossover Book Club. This is our other book club; adults reading teen/YA. I used to run this group too but this is Business Mum’s book club now. I have a browse through the catalogue and pick out three potential teen books that I think sound quite good and varied. I write them out for her to have a look through tomorrow; I’ve mentioned this, this and this.
A group of chattering elderly ladies with sticks come in. This is my favourite type of crowd to have in the bookshop. The banter between themselves is always good quality.
“I asked for it in Cornwall but they’d never heard of it” one of them is saying to her friends. I am bracing myself to be a hero because, actually, I already know what book they have come in for. I heard one of them say it about a minute before they were all in the shop.
“Have you got a book called… (me, biting my lip)… … The Wonky Donkey?… Not the Stinky one!” she clarifies.
This Wonky Donkey? Course we bloody have! !!The crowd goes wild!!!!
“Ooh it was waiting for you here!” one says to the shopper. “Aren’t you glad we came into this shop?” another says. I receive many thanks as they leave and I’m left feeling like an absolute legend in my own time shop. Might as well cash up now. It’s not going to get any better than that.
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. Thanks.
Advent calendar books - let the countdown to us beginning the countdown begin!
No because the storm trashed my favourite one yesterday by blowing it inside out and bending all the spokes in the process.
Business Mum here! So glad I reordered Wonky Donkey to make you look good! BTW Winter is coming...
Yesss! We made it onto receipts! A huge pleasure to come in and meet you x Claire