Hello, it is I, your manic only gently-misted pixie bookshop dreamgirl duckling and this is the next update live from the bookshop.
July did indeed end as our worst July ever. This is almost an impressive feat considering one July we were closed for two weeks while Mum had a hip replacement and I was isolating. Anyway, it’s done and the doors are open for August. The fine rain is silently spritzing the welcome mat, but it’s a much better situation than yesterday, when I walked to the bookshop in the same ten minutes the entire contents of sea fell from the sky and I had to sit through my bookclub in saturated culottes and wet socks. That cursed July! But, August will be different. August will be better. Let it rip.
These posts will remain free, with comments open so you can send me queries like ‘Can I pre-order the new Claire Keegan?’1 and ‘Do you have a printer?2’
The Booker Longlist has been announced this morning. That’s the thirteen3 books that Some People Somewhere think you should read. Feel super smug by reading just one or two of them, and then champion them loudly so everyone around you feels guilty for having read none of them. Here’s a handy list. I actually think this sounds like an unusually tempting selection and I’m going to try and make time for In Ascension, Pearl, Western Lane and All the Little Bird-Hearts, even though I hate the title of that last one. The only author I’ve read previously on the list is Paul Murray, who I have enjoyed immensely, so maybe I’ll try and get to The Bee Sting at some point too. Let me know in the comments which ones you fancy most.
I love the smell of bookshops.
- a chic lady who does not come in and smell the bookshop.
My first task this morning is washing up all the cups from last night’s bookclub. Post-bookclub day is bad for that, but good in that there’s definitely fresh milk in the fridge and biscuits in the barrel. Yesterday’s discussions on Rebecca Kuang’s Yellowface were absolutely fascinating. Across the three groups the general consensus was that Yellowface was pretty unputdownable, but opinion differed on whether it was a fun satire or a grim state of affairs. There was also a riveting discussion on the posed complications of the author who seems to be directly blurring her own story with her character’s. The insight into the publishing industry was also a real eye-opener for lots of people, who couldn’t believe how tedious the whole thing can be behind the scenes. One member said to me “It’s all so long and difficult. You must really want to be a published author.”4
Next month the book clubs are reading How to Kidnap the Rich by Rahul Raina
- why not order a copy and read along with us?
Five people in the shop at once! Better document it in case it doesn’t happen again. One of the people is a baby. One of the people is me. But still, five! Positively bustling.
Bookpost this week has included a very welcome finished copy of Celia Dale’s Sheep’s Clothing.5 Celia Dale’s A Helping Hand was one of my top ten books last year so I’ve been really looking forward to this. It publishes in September. Thanks to friends at Daunt Publishing for sending me an early reading copy. A sinister treat for sure!
Started early, took my dog on a walk along the sand dunes and down the promenade before work, listening to an old episode of a new-to-me literary podcast Always Take Notes. I listened to Patrick Radden Keefe’s6 interview this morning, recorded before he wrote Empire of Pain, which, by the way, my agent, Louise Lamont suggests is the perfect post-Succession reading if you’re looking for another fucked-up family to spend some time with, but she adds that Say Nothing is the better book. I also listened to the New Yorker Poetry podcast and enjoyed this poem by Adrienne Su. I’ll order one of her books for our poetry shelf, that really only I shop from.
Sold the biggest puppet we have in the shop! A big, beautiful, red dragon that would not fit into a carrier bag. I am especially delighted when people go out of the shop with a large animal in their arms.
I didn’t go to the coffee shop and I made my lunch at home so I can treat myself to Rachel Ingall’s Selected Novellas today. I loved her short novel, Mrs Caliban, re-issued under those glorious Faber Editions that I never shut up about.7 I’ve previously written about They, The Glass Pearls and Termush. There are eight novellas in this collection. Eight entire novellas! For less than Ten English Pounds! Now that’s what I call… Macabre. Imagine if I was the sort of person who could just read them in a random order, choosing the title I was most drawn to first. Don’t worry. That would never happen. I’ll read them like I read all short stories, poetry books and Selected anything. Front to back, including the foreward, afterward, acknowledgments and all the publishing ephemera in the order that it is printed. As nature intended.
One of my other tasks today is to look over the list of graphic novels and manga that we’re ordering this week. There’s been a steep incline in enquiries for these books recently. We’ve always been a bit daunted by the prospect of keeping a permanent stock; unsure how to curate it. There’s so much and everything is multi-series, multi volume - wouldn’t we always just have the wrong part? But now it feels like we’re missing a browsing moment for our adult and older teen customers. They aren’t sure what they want, it isn’t something they’re already invested in, but perhaps they’d like to be. We need to show willing on our shelves and we’re ready to dedicate some space to it. So we’re putting together an initial stock list for a proper selection based on a suggested list circulated by the Booksellers Association. I’m replacing several things with titles I secretly want to buy myself. Which is how we stock the entire shop, anyway. It’s a semi-costly experiment, but we won’t know unless we try…
A lovely lady rings to enquire about our event with Julia Bradbury. Unfortunately, that’s a different bookshop entirely, and we have no such event. I google Julia Bradbury because I don’t watch TV and I’m not sure which one she is. Ah yes.
Here are all the books I read in (cursed) July. But it was not a cursed month for reading. I’ve already explained how much I enjoyed The Wager, and Wreath for the Enemy. Falling Animals was really like nothing else I’ve read (that I can remember) and I might come back to it for a bookclub choice in paperback. It also has a shipwreck, and you know how I feel about those.
I’d very much like to be able to sell you Ada Calhoun book - it’s about one of my favourite poets, Frank O’Hara, and Calhoun’s relationship with her own father through his own abandoned O’Hara project - but it isn’t published in the UK.
I wrote about a Frank O’Hara poem I love, here.
Aug 9 - Fog is another book I can’t sell you, but I won’t let that stop me recommending Kathryn Scanlan’s most recent book, Kick the Latch, again.
Crikey, it’s closing time and I haven’t even cashed up yet. Or paid for my purchase, which may well be the final few pennies that make today’s takings look acceptable. It’s actually been a really decent day with lots of customers collecting their orders, so August is looking brighter already. Happy reading, folks. See you next week.
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Yeah, but not, like, a public one.
obnoxious that they call it The Booker Dozen.
I do.
I don’t have a direct purchase link for this one yet - email me to pre-order directly (UK).
I liked that he described his own name as ‘aggressively Irish’.
Obviously I have already pre-ordered the forthcoming re-issue of The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford
Sorry, just here to be that smug person that goes I spotted the Kate Atkinson title in the post. I love it when writers do that.
Also, if you’re interested in the Sacklers, the documentary about Nan Goldin and her activism, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, is superb.
Say Nothing is so good! I was talking about it at work today, one of my colleagues had read it recently and say she had it on paper and audio book so just never it down. It's a real page-turner, in a way that is rare.
Also Elaine Feeney for the Booker!