Tag: books in the wild

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Supermarket update

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I finally made it into a supermarket with more than a single carcase of books, and so here I am with a quick update on what’s in the supermarket (and how much the selection has shrunk). This is my nearest Big Tesco. They used to have one side of a whole aisle in books, but things have changed. I used to be able to go in there and pick up however many books were in their deal no problem. Less so these days and the deals have got less good too – no blanket 2 for £x any more. Hey ho.

So what we have here I would say are the usual suspects – dominated by thrillers and murder mysteries from the big names, with a few bits of women’s fiction, romance, and non-fiction thrown in. There’s the new Ali Hazelwood and the Vera Wong sequel – which would have been my purchases if you’d held me down and said I have to buy something – but I still haven’t read the first Vera Wong (note to self, do sort that out) and the Deep End has a heroine who is a college athlete and I’m not sure I can cope with such young protagonists at the moment!

I was starting to worry that this was going to be the first book selection I’ve seen in ages with no Richard Osman, but there they are on the top left – just The Thursday Murder Club books though, no We Solve Murders. This was about the point where I started thinking what a strange mix of books this was – with new releases all mixed in with the older books and no “best sellers” list visible to explain why. I guess this is probably down to the fact that it’s a smaller selection, but if there’s logic to the display, it escapes me!

And finally we have a small selection of hardbacks and it’s the same sort of genres but the mix is a bit difference – this leans more into the women’s fiction end of things, as do the paperbacks at the bottom half of the shelf. I was hoping they might have the Anthony Horowitz on a good deal, but no. There’s a lot of sagas here of various types and other historical fiction. I feel like this Tesco has always had a lot of sagas, so maybe that’s what the locals like around here, although if you’re a saga reader my experience is that you also tend to be a fast reader and so whether this would keep you happy for many weeks I’m not sure!

And as a bonus contrast: These are from my local little-Asda:

I think this might actually be a better selection – it’s got the new Rebecca Yarros and the previous two, along with some Cassandra Clare and other hardback Romantasy. It’s also got a few more recent of the paperback releases.

Like Tesco, this has sagas but it’s also got a lot of Sarah J Maas to continue the romantasy trend that Tesco was almost totally missing. And it’s got a better selection of romance too – especially considering the size of display. And going back to my earlier point about the reduction in size of the book selection at the Big Tesco – this is one less carcase of books at the Asda than at the Tesco and one is a 24 hour mega market and the other is not.

Have a great Saturday everyone.

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Verity Wanders

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Here we go again, this week’s Saturday post is basically the result of me wandering around a lot of bookshops over the last few weeks and having some thoughts about it and about me and my reading habits.

Firstly, I think we’re living in a really interesting time for cover design at the moment. I think we went through a whole phase of being able to work out pretty much what genre a book was in just by looking at the cover – and now: not so much. Or at least not so much at the moment. I mean we all know what I read most of the time, and I still picked up a bunch of these to read the backs because of the covers. And some of them were intriguing, but we all know that I’d buy one and it would sit on the shelves for actual years as I picked almost everything else to read first!

Moving towards stuff that I might actually read, we’ve got some new hardback crime fiction, which actually makes me feel guilty all over again – because I have Alex Hay’s last book, at least one Tom Hindle and the Oskar Jensen that Helle’s Hound is a sequel to still waiting to be read. Lets move on quickly before I feel any worse.

Having just said that I’m feeling bad for not reading things, this has the book I acutally bought on it – I was in Foyles on the Tuesday before Show Don’t Tell was published and was delighted to see it out early – and signed. So I bought it. And I’ve read it now. Sue me

Moving on, this is actually my local Waterstones and the tower they use for new hardbacks. This is the crime side and it is interesting to me that this is the first place (I think) that I’ve seen Steph Plum 31 in the flesh, which as it came out in the autumn is a surprise. It’s also the first time I’ve come across A Trial in Three Acts – which like the Curtis Sittenfeld was out on the shelves a few days early – this was taken last Saturday and it only came out officially two days ago. Sidenote: it’s enough to make me think twice about pre-ordering books if I might be able to get a copy from an actual bookshop a few days early, but authors need pre-orders. What a dilemma. Anyway, a Trial in Three Acts is a legal mystery about a murder committed live on stage. And as we all know I love a theatre-set mystery, so this just went onto my list of books to look out for at the airport! Also, I love the cover of A Stolen Heart, which it seems is the second book set in Soviet-controlled Kyiv in 1919. As we know, I like to read in order, so I’ll have to find the first one in this series in a shop (or as a Kindle sample) and have a read because it sounds intriguing but also like it has huge potential to be Too Grim.

And finally, more new fiction, more lovely covers, more books I hadn’t heard about mixed in with books that I have. I have now picked up The House With Nine Locks at least three times because of the gorgeous cover before reading the back and remembering that blurbs that include “a dangerous game of cat and mouse with fanatical and brutal detective” and the phrase “morally complex” are usually Not For Me. See also 33 Place Brugmann which has the word “devastating” in the blurb and is about occupied Brussels in World War 2. I have also picked up The Book of Gold more than once – but it is the first (and so far only published) book in a promised trilogy so that can wait!

Have a great Saturday!

bookshops

Books in the Wild: The RSC

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Happy Saturday everyone. Today I have another post in my occasional series of shops that do a very specialised selection of books as part of their offer: namely the Royal Shakespeare Company’s gift shop at their theatre in Stratford Upon Avon. As you know I was there a couple of weeks back to see Twelfth Night – which ended its run last weekend, so there may have been a little tweakage by now, but I suspect in the main the book selection is fairly consistent – although clearly other bits of the shop will change with the shows.

Lets start with the lovely collection of books about Shakespeare, about acting in Shakespeare or about theatre in the era of Shakespeare. There are a few exceptions but that’s basically the theme of this whole bookcase – among them there’s Judi Dench’s book about her experience being in lots and lots of Shakespeare which is pretty well known and Simon Russell Beale’s book about his experiences – which is less well known. There’s the Bill Bryson books, plus Harriet Walter’s new-this-autumn book about what the women of Shakespeare’s plays might have said.

Next up we have this case of novels that are Shakespeare related in some way and the start of a very large selection of play texts and books about teaching Shakespeare. If you’re a student whose got to study one of the plays or you’ve got to teach it, this would be a great place to have a look at the options.

Because there are so many. So very many. And of course there are also play texts for other shows that the RSC has put one – the Christmas show in the Swan theatre this year was The Red Shoes, and you can also so that they’ve got Marlowe’s Edward II there which is currently in rehearsal ahead of a run starting in late February.

And then there’s books about acting, and a bit of a general miscellany of books that don’t really fit anywhere else but are sort of related to the Shakespeare and acting. Basically if you’re interested in Shakespeare and/or acting, this is probably the best selection you’re going to get outside a really giant specialist bookshop near somewhere with lots of students (like Blackwells or Heffers)

And finally they’ve got loads of other stuff too, but I really did love the baby clothes – they may be too young to go to the theatre themselves yet, but there’s no reason you can’t start them on there way with a babygro with an appropriate quote!

Have a great Saturday everyone!

books

Books in the Wild: New Releases!

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Last week was the biggest book release week of the year, and so I’ve been in the bookshops to check out the new arrivals. Because of course I have, what else would you have expected of me?!

Apologies for the angle – there was a table of non fiction in the way of the straight shot, but here are the foodie and celebrity books front and centre at Waterstones Gower Street. I’m not going to talk you through all of them, just the ones that are interesting to me. If you haven’t watched Stanley Tucci‘s TV programmes where he goes around Italy eating amazing food, then you’ve missed out. This is his second book off the back of the success of those series – this one is a diary of the food he ate over a year. The Nigel Slater is a similar sort of collection of food writing rather than recipes. Rebel Sounds I hadn’t seen before, and actually came out at the end of September, but it’s a look at the role music played in the twentieth century in resistance to oppression of various types. And From Here to the Great Unknown is the big celebrity autobiography/memoir of the year – it’s Lisa Marie Presley, as finished by her daughter Riley Keogh after her mother’s death. I had a read of the start of this one and it’s using different fonts for the bits written by Lisa Marie and Riley and actually I’m more interested to read it now than I was before.

More new non-fiction here, and again I’m not going to talk you through them all. But The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker is a history of the high street from Annie Gray, who wrote The Greedy Queen, which I enjoyed when I read it five or so years ago. The Scapegoat is about George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham and final favourite of James I. I’m pretty across the Tudors, and the Hanoverians, but I’m not as good with the Stuarts – particularly the early ones, so this in my area of interest, although we know how long it can take me to get around to a hardback history book… And the other in this category is Augustus the Strong, about an eighteenth century ruler of Poland and Saxony and which is described as a study in failed statecraft, as he left Poland so damaged that it disappeared as a state.

Now obviously not all these crime hardbacks are new, but there are a couple that are, and that I want to read. You know about the Richard Osman already, but I’m also interested in the Julian Clary – I read the introduction which made me laugh, and then started on the book and had to force myself to put it down before I accidentally bought it! There’s also the new Jackson Brody book – this is squarely in the “series I want to read, but haven’t got around to yet” as I’ve watched a couple of the TV adaptations and need to get the books they’re based on and read the others before I consider a hardback purchase. I’m also interested in Hells Bells, but that’s a sequel and I should probably read the previous one first. And finally there’s the new Jane Thynne down in the bottom left corner. I’ve read three of her five Clara Vine novels which are set in 1930s Berlin, but this is a standalone (or maybe the start of a new series), also in the 1930s but this time in London and Vienna.

And that’s your lot today – you’ll be surprised to hear I came away without purchasing anything, but that’s only because I was feeling so bad about the state of the pile and so many that I wanted were hardbacks…

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Eyrolles, Paris

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Last week I wrote about Shakespeare and Company, this week we’ve got the other bookshop I visited on that Paris trip – Eyrolles, which is just around the corner (in Paris terms) and also has a stationery section. My sort of shop. Sadly I forgot to take a photo of the front, so apologies for that.

The first time I went into a French bookshop, I think one of the biggest differences in noticed compared to a British one was the white spines. And then I noticed the size difference. And how many of them were published by Folio. It was only when I got my first French book back to the shelf that I noticed that they write the opposite way on the spine to British books. And it’s been… well a while since that first visit, and French publishing has changed reassuringly little. There are a few differences though

And it’s not just the nonfiction shelves, a lot of fiction is the same. Except for crime fiction. A lot of them get black spines. And I spent a lot of time in French bookshops during the year that I lived there, and I’ve still not really worked out what the rule is for what gets what on that front. And my French translations of Agatha Christie have yellow covers and spines.

The bit where I noticed a change was in the romance and Romantasy where there were they now seem to be using some of the same covers as other countries rather than going for something completely different: I mean look at the cover on the French translation of Casting Off that I bought – I think we’re on the fourth generation of covers for the Cazalet series in the UK and that is nothing like any of them.

I guess it’s too early to tell if this is the BookTok influence – meaning that people all over the world want their covers to match the ones they’ve seen the US book influencers waving, no matter which language it’s in, but considering how different I know the covers used to be (which I don’t with some of the other countries where I’ve seen the same trend) it’s where I’ve wondered about it the most.

But somethings don’t change – here you see that the spines might not be white, but they’re not all the wrap around cover-spine thing that we get so much in the UK. As I said, I bought a copy of Casting Off in French, some very nice stationery (I love Seyes ruled paper, and have produced some of my best handwriting on it over the years) and felt like proper Parisians, then we went off down the road to Shakespeare and Company to be touristy!

Have a great weekend

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Shakespeare and Company

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This week’s Recommendsday was inspired by the trip to Paris, so it’s only fair that I write about a Parisian bookshop – and this is probably Paris’s most famous bookshop of all.

It should first be noted that this is the second bookshop called Shakespeare and Company that Paris has had – the first was set up by Sylvia Beach just after the First World War and was where Hemingway and all the Lost Generation crowd hung around in the 1920s and 1930s. That Shakespeare and company was forced to shut down by the Nazis in 1941 and never reopened.

This Shakespeare and Company opened as La Mistral in 1951 and was renamed in 1964 on the 400th anniversary of Shakepeare’s birth in honour of Sylvia Beach and her store. And it is now iconic in its own right. It sells new, second-hand and antiquarian books and the crowds to get in start early. We came past about an hour before opening time on the day we visited and there were already a couple of people waiting. We went and had breakfast, stopped at another bookstore (about which more next week!) and came back and the queue had grown somewhat…

This is one of my photos from the queue – you can see some of the queue but also the wonderful (working) water fountain. Luckily it was quite a fast moving queue that morning – we were probably only waiting about ten or fifteen minutes to get in, which was less than I was expecting so I was pretty happy on that front.

You’re not allowed to take photos inside, so this is all I can offer – but you can see the sort of higgledy piggledy ambiance that’s going on, which is just the sort of bookshop that I love. There’s no rush to get you in and out and there are plenty of spots to sit if you want to – but we were a bit tight for time, so we had a really lovely wander around – I picked up that second hand Elizabeth Taylor you saw in Books Incoming and my sister got a cute childrens book – mine got the famous stamp, hers got the sticker, and we were very happy. It’s literally just across the river from Notre Dame, so if you’re heading there to see how the rebuild is going, it’s really easy to find.

Have a great weekend.

bookshops

Books in the Wild (sort of): Barbican Shop

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Did I go and see Kiss Me, Kate for a third time this week? You bet I did. And did I take the opportunity to have a good old nosy in their shop. Why yes. I even bought something (a t-shirt not a book, I was fresh from a three book trip to Waterstones Gower Street), but they have books and it’s an interesting selection

The fiction selection has some of the usual suspects – Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and the Dolly Alderton for example, but also some stuff I haven’t seen like Big Swiss and some of the books in translation.

Then there’s a lovely section of London-set books of all sorts, from novels to walking tours to non-fiction.

There’s also a music section – on the first picture you can see there’s another shop on the top level – and that is mostly records, but the downstairs shop also has records, including The Slits album – which reminded me again how good Viv Albertine’s memoir is.

There’s also lots of art and trinkets and some really nice prints of the Barbican or that fit with the brutalist style, but I’m back on the books – this last table has some more of the more regularly spotted literary fiction. All in all a good selection if you’re looking to pick up something in a rush!

Have a great weekend.

books, bookshops

Books in the Wild: Daunt Marylebone

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One of the reasons I love wandering over Daunt Books in Marylebone is because the building is pretty and I like to see what they’re highlighting in their windows – because it’s usually totally different to the other book shops in central London. So imagine my delight this week when they actually changed one of the window displays while I was browsing in the shop!

This was the one they swapped out – you can actually se there are already a couple of empty blocks in the picture – which is for a shiny new edition of a 1950s novel that I had never heard of, but that sounds really interesting. Green Water, Green Sky is about a divorcee and her daughter who lead an itinerant existence in the sort of European spots that rich people liked to hang out in, and what happens when the daughter tries to break free of her mother.

And this is what it was replaced with – The Damascus Events – which is about the 1860 massacre in Damascus, which I’m going to admit that I’d also never heard of, but which was significant in the change from the old Ottoman order towards the modern Middle East.

On the other side we have Family and Borghesia – which is two novellas about domestic life, isolation and the passing of time, which I’m sure are excellent but really don’t sound like a me thing!

The little window was Back to the Local which is a new edition of a book from 1949 about the pubs of London, which seems just perfect for the location!

Then the multi-book window just has all sorts of things – including several from my list of things I’d like to buy when the pile gets to a sensible state – like Once Upon a Time World about the French Riviera, Erotic Vagrancy, the latest in the stream of books about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and the sequel to Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, and Abroad in Japan.

The crime tower and table has quite a lot of stuff that I’ve read 0 but also enough stuff that I’ve still got on the pile to make me feel guilty enough not to buy any books! So along with the stuff I’ve read like the Richard Osman and Rev Richard Coles (who Him Indoors had not realised were not all Richard Osman), Eight Detectives and The Cracked Mirror which I’m reading at the moment, there’s also The Strangers Companion, Helle and Death and The Mystery Guest which are all sitting on the Kindle…

This side of the crime display was much less guilt inducing – just the Tom Hindle Murder On Lake Garda that’s sitting on the pile, and then the third Cesare Aldo and the Grave Expectations sequel that I want to read, but that I can resist until they come out in paperback!

And finally, a new hardback fiction display – featuring Welcome to Glorious Tuga which I’ve read, and The Divorcées which is on the actual pile because I haven’t and Background for Love and Anita De Monte Laughs Last which sounds like I might really like them, if I can just get the pile under control some time…

Have a great weekend!

book related

Books in the Wild: Foreign translations

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Mixing it up a little bit this weekend, but as well as looking at the book selections at the airport and the English language offers in any bookshops I encounter I also take a look at the books I can spot in translation – and the different covers they get… or otherwise. So here are a few that I’ve spotted on the last few trips.

Lets start with some Italian Julia Quinn! These are non-Bridgertons including some of my favourites – like What Happens in London and The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever. I’m always interested to see historical romance covers because they are so wildly different between the UK and the US even before you get to translated versions. In the UK these originally had line-drawn almost cartoon-y covers and now have been repackaged with headless torso photographs of men and or women to match the reissued Bridgerton books which are now getting the couples from the show on the cover as their series happens.

I thought this was really interesting – as well as the artwork on Husband Material, Love, Theoretically and the Ana Huangs, they’ve also kept the English titles. Now with Husband Material I can sort of understand that, because it’s so built in, but the others you could have changed it surely? All of these have the same cover design in the US and the UK so I’m wondering if this is a TikTok influenced thing: Have they kept the titles that people might have seen on English language BookTok? I don’t know, but I find it very, very interesting.

From Italy to Spain now, and next up is a previous Book of the Week – Jenny Jackson’s Pineapple Street, which has got the US cover, which I just think is too lairy compared to the UK one. I like the idea of the formal and fancy room, because it is a rich people problems book, I just think this is an ugly set of colours!

And finally here we have Spanish Sally Rooneys, which have got the English language cover concepts, but the titles translated and a few tweaks. Some of these have the same editions in the UK and the US and some don’t – I’m not sure which came first or whether it’s changed as she’s grown in popularity, but I do really love the covers her books get – they’re so distinctive and eye-catching.

Here endeth this Saturday’s trip through cover design, I hope you’ve enjoyed it – it may make a reappearance at some point in the future you never know…

books, bookshops

Books in the Wild: Works summer update

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I wasn’t going to do this this week but then I went into my local The Works and they had a tonne of summer books and I though that I had to flag it to you all so you can get your holiday/vacation purchasing underway.

This is the new book section – and there’s a few that aren’t my thing but there’s the new Emily Henry, some of the big memoirs from Christmas at a bargain price (now coming out in paperback which is presumably why) the paperback of Yellowface, some TV tie-ins and cook books.

Let’s start by saying that if it wasn’t for NetGalley, pre-orders and airport purchasing, I would have spent a tonne of money because they have such good stuff at the moment. There’s the new Olivia Dade, the Tessa Bailey I bought on the way to Manila, Elle Kennedy, the new Amy Lea, and so many of the current New Adult favourites.

This is the slightly older but still not old enough to be in the 3 for £6 selection – all the Richard Osmans, Lessons in Chemistry, The Maid, the first Megan Clawson (the new one is in the first photo), Beth O’Leary and a tonne of sagas and crimes that are too much for me!

This shelf was where I learned that there are now three Finlay Donovan books! And I still haven’t read the first one. There’s a tonne of magic, sports romance, murder mystery and paranormal. Basically there are books for you in all the key genres that are trending at the moment no matter what sort of budget you’re working on. As long as you don’t read as many books as I do. For once I managed to resist purchasing, but that’s only because I was heading to buy a stack of books to give as a gift and couldn’t carry any more!

Have a great Saturday everyone