Hi friends,
It’s Friday again, and this Friday comes straight after Thursday, which was WORLD BOOK DAY. You might not have heard about this, even though you live in the WORLD, because actually this is a day only celebrated in the UK (I don’t make the rules, I just make fun of them.) Business Mum has made a lovely window display to celebrate this year’s WBD books, including Can You Get Jellyfish in Space? by Dr Sheila Kanani (MBE) who is an awesome author/planetary physicist and just happens to live locally - we love her!
This time last year, I was out there doing World Book Day events (*shudder*) with my author hat on, but this year I’m hunched over a computer in the freezing bookshop, as nature intended. We’ve got all our Springy/Easter books out, but it feels like Winter is really putting his foot down - the streets are pretty quiet and the clouds are a bit blankety, so let’s just hang on and see what falls first; the rain or our takings... Stay tuned for customers…
Stay tuned a bit longer…
Please…. stay?
As there’s nothing happening yet, allow me to mention that I posted my 100th newsletter on Substack this week! There aren’t many things I’ve done 100 times on purpose, so I wrote an obnoxious post about it for my paid subscribers, but I’ve since unlocked for everyone to read because I had a lot of help with it (from the future.)
Speaking of help from the future, remember that proof I took home last week - The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley? Well, when I tell you that I devoured that book this week. I cannot wait for you all to read it. Pre-order strongly advised. Woof!
What’s a World Book Day??
A bit more about WBD then, while we wait for some customers: it’s actually a hugely important reading charity, which aims to help every child in the country own a book. At school and various other outlets, children are given a paper token that can be used as £1 off any book, or be exchanged directly one of the special ‘World Book Day Books.’ This is a great selection of small books from leading children’s authors/illustrators, specially produced for WBD each year - it’s a big honour to be a World Book Day author, and it almost guarantees you a place in the book charts that week, as well as lots of events and publicity. The books themselves are bought by the bookshops who stock them, and then redeemed for free, so the books, or the discount, are essentially a gift from the bookseller, but this is something we’re all happy to do as the stock packs are very reasonable for us to buy in and it encourages more families into the shop to swap their tokens. We want children to have these books! A lot of schools also take the day to have a dress-up-as-a-book-character day, so Xwitter and Instagram are flooded with images of cute kids in wigs and cardboard boxes with their mum’s uniqlo thebag. Everyone’s a winner for World Book Day!!! (Except the parents who have to pull together another fancy dress outfit.)
Yesterday might have been WBD but today is IWD - International Women’s Day, which celebrates the women’s rights movements, which I’m absolutely not going to make fun of, even though this makes me laugh every year. Why not buy a book by an international woman today from a female-owned bookshop ? To help, that’s literally any book by a woman - my favourite kind - from my bookshop via this link.
First customer in just needs a couple of greetings cards but she does mention that she loved the recommendation I gave her last time (internationally acclaimed woman, Emily St. John Mandel) so that’s encouraging and gives me yet another opportunity to recommend her to you. Just read her, already?
Delivery came nice and early, full of international women and books from around the world UK. Not the usual delivery driver but he somehow knew my first name already, and shortened it to ‘Kate’ which I always find immediately endearing. Anyway, there’s a few great children’s books I want to mention here from creators I really admire - check out these beauties.
Storm-Cat by Magenta Fox - I love Magenta’s soft round illustrations and her gentle palette is so pleasing on the eye. This is a story about owning your feelings and its clever imagery will speak to young children and sweet little kittens everywhere.
Bear and Bird - The Adventure and Other Stories by Jarvis - Have I mentioned this series before? I probably have. I love these short stories of best friends. Jarvis is one of my favourite illustrators and the humour in these conversational tales is exactly my cup of tea. Perfect for emerging readers and gift-tastic in their hardback editions.
Adventure Mice - Mice on the Moon by Reeve & McIntyre - Another series I find absolutely irresistible. I’ve been a long-time fan of Sarah McIntyre’s illustration but this series is my favourite thing she’s done - the watercolour paintings for these books are *so* gorgeous I had to actually buy one for my home. She makes these books with her writing partner, the extremely dapper Philip Reeve. I just can’t fault them!
Rewild the World at Bedtime by Emily Hawkins and
This hardback would make a beautiful present for any young naturalist. Taking us all around the world (international), Emily and Ella (women) show us how some endangered species are coming back from the brink and the real-life projects working to help nature recover. The illustrations are truly beautiful, and this is a hopeful book that will inspire a lot of little readers to care for the world.One other thing that was in the order was this small book about Pulp’s This Is Hardcore. I send a text to BM querying it ‘customer order??’ as it’s something quite niche and is likely a customer order that she hasn’t written down in the book. It turns out it isn’t, and it’s just for general stock, and is part of a series that I’m now intent on stocking, even though the format is too small to display properly and won’t get picked up. Regardless, wasn’t This Is Hardcore a *great* single? Let’s all listen to it now.
A very sweet little girl comes into the shop with her daddy to swap her WBD voucher from nursery. She picks ‘Gregg the Sausage Roll’ (when I said the selection was great, what I meant was - it has something for everyone). This one isn’t Daddy’s favourite choice either, but the cute little girl wants what the cute little girl wants and he sighs and as they go out with the sausage roll book he sings “You Are My Sunshine…”
Is there a nice place for an omelette around here?
A lady who used to work with Business Mum a LONG time ago comes into the shop to surprise her. Surprise! She’s not here! It’s always a shame when this happens because BM is literally here every day except Fridays. And Wednesdays, when we’re closed. And Sundays, when we’re also closed. Okay, so there’s a good chance you’ll miss BM if you come to surprise her at the shop, but an even better chance that you’d miss me - actually not a problem; I get a lot less visitors than BM. Anyway, this blast from the past was hoping to catch up with BM and had to make do with me, which turned out alright because of all the thousands of colleagues BM had in her previous professional life, this is one I’d met when I was very, very young, and even more incredibly, I had a genuine memory of her! This particular lady had such incredible long curly dark hair it had imprinted on me forever; I remember meeting her, when I was six or seven, and thinking she was simply the most glamorous person I’d ever seen. She looks exactly the same now, by the way, thirty years later. I look different… a lot more like BM these days, apparently.
Look at those fantastic paper plate… jellyfish!!!
I’ve had a box of proofs from the peeps at Pan Macmillan. Let’s have a quick look:
The King’s Witches by Kate Foster Scotland! King James! A trial! Exile? A lady’s maid…
How to Winter by Kari Leibowitz Harnessing? Your Mindset? A book to help you through the darkest season. (As a Christmas baby and collector of coats, this isn’t one for me, but maybe it’s one for you?)
Air and Love by Or Rosenboim Food! Family! History! Memoir! Travel! Cinnamon! Noodle Kugel?
Daughter of Calamity by Rosalie M. Lin Jazz! Shanghai! Gangsters! Ancient Grudges! so probably some New Mutiny!
Every Time I Go On Vacation Someone Dies by Catherine Mack Literary rivals! Rabid fans! A Crazed Stalker! Ex-flames! Plural!
Crikey it’s only 4pm and it’s been hours since we took any money for any books. A few WBD tokens though - so some books have left the premises. Not as many as arrived in the delivery though, so if the day balanced on a set of scales, we’d be sitting on the floor. My last sale was two of the Princess Minna books (another great recommendation for emerging readers 5/6ish, btw).
EUGGHHH!!! DOG POO!!!
- so that’s something to look out for.
A lady comes into collect her (very interesting sounding) book and loses her shopping list while she puts her change away. She’s flustered with her purse and keeps saying “I won’t keep you” even though I have not spoken to anyone in a few hours and will happily talk her through every pocket on her bag and coat if she wants me to. Anyway she finds the list in her purse after all and now she can cross ‘bookshop’ off it.
One more recommendation for a book by an international woman today, as it won the extremely cool Gordon Burn Prize last night and I’m just so thrilled about it because I simply cannot think of a book that I like more than this one. Kathryn Scanlan’s Kick The Latch was the book that made me start this newsletter, because I couldn’t contain all my feelings for it in a tweet. And 100 posts later, here I am, recommending it again. Sorry, not sorry.
Not buying any books myself today as I spent too much last week. If I were to take a book home this week, it’d be this one, which has arrived at the shop but will have to sit on my special little Reserved for Katie - Don’t sell to anyone else… unless someone really wants it… but then make sure you order another copy - Shelf.
Look, I don’t mind Winter but I am looking forward to the Spring where I have slightly busier days to tell you about. It’s been a bit Woe-R-Us the past few weeks, hasn’t it? Thanks for sticking with me. I do so appreciate all your likes, shares and comments; it does feel like having someone to talk to even when the shop is so empty. Takings today: £101 - which looks like LOL.
You can support this here bricks-and-mortar independent bookshop by buying your books from me via this link (within the UK), and if you want to support this woman internationally, you can upgrade your subscription to this newsletter. TTFN.
I feel seen with that uniqlo thebag reference 😂
Another great receipt from the bookshop. Oh man, I love these.