Stationery magpie
29 May, 2012
Like a magpie is attracted to shiny things, so am I drawn to lovely, clean, crisp stationery. Oooo notepads; aaahhhh fountain pens; an excuse to write or receive a greetings card – sign me up! Paperchase’s flagship store on Tottenham Court Road is sometimes far too close for my bank account’s comfort. So, an item […]
What the Dickens? Part 3
24 May, 2012
You may have seen me coming and going on the London underground this past week. Yes, that was me bowed under the weight of my library copy of Charles Dickens: A Life (it needed a bag all of its own) and trying to read it in cramped tube conditions. I’d had the book ‘reserved’ at […]
What’s app?
14 May, 2012
The app-loving literary public has been spoiled of late, in my opinion. The Waste Land app in particular has made me very jealous of Faber & Faber’s archives and ingenuity. And then at the recent London book fair one of the few seminars I managed to get to was titled ‘What’s App? The Relevance of […]
Bookswapping in central London
4 May, 2012
I’m usually the most oblivious person to trends and news, my dose of what’s going on in the world is most likely to be gleaned from a Thursday or Friday night flip through The Evening Standard. So, it’s with some trepidation that for the second week running, I give you lucky, literary-loving people a hot […]
“Lurverly books, two for a paaand”
24 April, 2012
Shockingly bad Mockney accent à la Dick Van Dyke aside, I am the bearer of great news. The news being of a brand new, Sunday market for new and second hand books. “Oooooo” I hear you coo, and rightly so. There’s something lovely about picking up fruit, veg, flowers etc from an outdoor market (weather […]
More reflections on LBF2012
20 April, 2012
London is a great city. It’s even greater when there aren’t hailstones bouncing off your head and you aren’t being eviscerated by pointy elbows on the tube, but that’s beside the point. In a similar way, the London Book Fair is a great gathering of bookish minds made superlative when you remember to grab a […]
Space to read / advertising space
10 April, 2012
Anyone who spends time on Facebook will have an inkling of the way targeted advertising is headed. One small tweak of a relationship status and you’ll find your page overflowing with ad boxes for bridal hair, hen party ideas and rings. I understand that FB isn’t slow on the uptake when new parents use the […]
COOK(ing the)BOOKS…
5 April, 2012
In a week where we’ve had book-sized blocks of chocolate everywhere around the office (see Sara’s post), I now have come across a mention of an actual edible cookbook in my Emerald Street email. Click on the picture below and click through to see the stages of ‘composition’. How utterly wonderful is that? It has […]
Smell-a-vision books!
27 March, 2012
I was reading through The Bookseller the other day and came across this article about scented books coming to a store near you soon. It made me think back to the heady days of my childhood when smell-a-vision swept the nation. I think it was a Comic Relief night that particularly sticks in my memory. […]
Stop Press! Library OPENS!
12 March, 2012
Before I moved out of London, I lived in a house-share in Rotherhithe, East London. A place that recommended itself to me for its links to central London (I particularly liked the bus routes which took in London and Tower Bridges and the old wharf buildings), relatively cheap rent and proximity to then-boyfriend. What I […]
Literary Lottery
28 February, 2012
We’ve all done it haven’t we? Day-dreamed about winning the lottery, that is, especially following the glut of recent UK winners. But holidays, palatial residences and an indulged book-habit aside, I have recently added another item to the ‘when I’m rich’ list. Taking inspiration from the anonymous donor who has upped the prize fund for […]
A Prized Posession
23 February, 2012
The numbers of Kindles on my route to work has burgeoned since the Christmas holidays. Quelle surprise, you may rightly say, but what threw this into focus this week was a wonderful surprise gift: a first edition of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell signed both by the author Susanna Clarke and the illustrator Portia Rosenberg. […]
Sharing the love (digitally)
15 February, 2012
So how are we all today? Regretting those calorie-laden chocolates and unimpressed by the already-wilting flowers? Well, a good love story never gets old, so in (belated) honour of Valentine’s Day Allison & Busby are delighted to offer a selection of our best romance novels at 99p (in their digital formats) for a limited time […]
Opening the door to new young book prize judges
13 February, 2012
We all know that there are book prizes of all shapes and sizes: genre-specific awards from organizations like the CWA and RNA (and speaking of – Mary Nichols just been shortlisted for the RoNA Rose Award!); debut awards that shine a light on exciting and fresh new authors; the literary equivalents of those slightly po-faced […]
What the Dickens? Part Two
7 February, 2012
(For Part One click here) Walking around the city of London on a weekday evening, it’s not all that surprising that I start feeling peckish. Even after a long day, I can’t entirely blame this on my propensity to think of my stomach, as in addition to the obvious cafés and fast food places on […]
A healthy (reading) diet
30 January, 2012
If you read the title of this blog quickly, don’t worry, I’m not going to enumerate the many and varied ways I’m attempting to get back into something resembling shape this January, though that has unfortunately been a preoccupation of mine these past few, dark weeks. No, what I realized today was that it was […]
Would you like fries or a book with that?
27 January, 2012
I was interested to see some of the different responses online, whether praise or furore, to the news that McDonald’s were giving away Michael Morpurgo’s Mudpuddle Farm books with Happy Meals this month. Read the news here and here. and Perhaps it’s the visualization of a book in the place where you more often find […]
What the Dickens? Part One
19 January, 2012
Talk about poor timing. During 2012, the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth, the Charles Dickens museum in Camden will shut between Easter and Christmas (read more here…) That seems like a very long time to me and a shame considering the attention the man is due to get this year. But then again, we […]
Have you seen Wally?
10 January, 2012
As I picked up the most recent issue of The Bookseller I was greeted on the front cover by this charming, spectacled fellow. As I fondly remember squinting over various editions of Wally’s adventures, I was delighted to see that Wally has been popping up here, there and everywhere in unusual and crowded settings for […]
Pick a font, any font
6 January, 2012
As Chiara mentioned in the first blog post of 2012, I have some very wordy/worthy books on my current reading list. I haven’t finished Just My Type yet, though it’s so eminently dip-in-able that I could probably get two books going in tandem. If you haven’t come across this book yet and have any kind […]
The sights, sounds and smell of Christmas…
19 December, 2011
So the wind is howling, the office has collective sniffles and the economy has moved beyond the toilet bowl to somewhere around the u-bend, but still, there are still some nice Christmassy sights, sounds and even smells to enjoy. Here’s my recent tally. 1. Twinkly Lights. It doesn’t have to be Oxford Street’s, my own […]
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