How’s It Going? How Are You?

Hello! I wanted to start off this late July report by saying a massive thank you to everyone who showed up at the shop throughout the month, we had our best month at the shop yet! Your support makes it easier to navigate the tight margins that come with running the shop as well as allowing me to talk about books and various smutty and lovely things all day long!

A real highlight of the month was Emma Denny coming out for our first ever author event, safe to say it was a special one! We spoke about feelings, publishing, severed heads and what it’s like being a writer today. Emma was absolutely dynamic and the time slipped away from me. Thank you so much to everyone who came out! If you missed the event but are curious to see what Emma is about we have the whole trilogy available in store!

We have had a lovely restock of bookmarks from Alice over at Alice illustrates, my favourites are the dragons notably the Dream Dragon.

The dark romance section now exists although small. Having it sectioned out allows me to see what I have and where we can grow. Buying stock is always a gamble but a trusted source has provided me with a list so my plan is to order those and then go from there. Budgeting stock is difficult, I have to balance restocking with bringing in new titles so things will grow, it will just take time!

By the time this comes out we should have some new events happening. Our midnight release for ACOTAR is officially sold out so thank you so much for doing that! We have another ACOTAR themed event happening at the end of this September that I cannot wait for! It is our FanCast event where people will have the chance to present who they would choose for the ACOTAR movie! This event is going to be lots of fun and the winner will get a free copy of ACOTAR 6 and a ticket to our sold out midnight release party!

We have a bookclub launching in the next couple of weeks so if you are interested keep your eyes out for that!

We have our first indie author in stock! The lovely Belinda Campbell has dropped off three copies of her magical YA novel Something Wicked, I’m currently reading it and loving every minute!

Aside from further event details, I think that is all for now! I hope everyone is keeping cool in this diabolic hell heat! Catch you at the next one!

I like to think of myself as a reader and always have been. Outside of infancy I can’t remember a time when there wasn’t a book in my hand, even as I type this there are three books that I have on the go next to me.

Armed with discounts and ARCS courtesy of my jobs working in large book retailers I was able to feast from a table of epic literary proportions, sampling many authors I might not have reached for without the means.

No matter how curious I have been or how far I stray from romance, it is one of two genres I ever return to for re-reading the other being manga and graphic novels! At the beginning of this year I found myself feeling quite spiritually derelict and couldn’t seem to finish a single book that I picked up. I was deep in the throes of quite a serious pity party when I remembered Tessa! 

Tessa meaning Tessa Bailey who was and remains one of my longest loves. I picked up It Happened One Summer and felt my spirit settle. Since then this year I have almost exclusively been rereading books from my favourite authors. 

Even if you love reading with every fibre of your being, when you read for a job the burnout can so easily sneak in. I can easily go from reading the best book of my entire life to not wanting to pick up a book ever again. With the pressure off and the comfort dialed way on, the romance genre holds me ever so softly when I need it the most. 

There are times for expansion and times for retreat, part of being a good bookseller is knowing how to balance these things in a never ending ebb and flow. It never gets easier but a delightful way I have found to manage it this year is by reading more non fiction. 

Non Fiction is the literary equivalent to fibre, without it nothing can pass! It often adds illuminating context that allows me to digest everything else with ease! While it might not seem like Elsie Silver and Non Fiction would ever be paired together, Fire Weather by John Vaillant provided me with additional context to Bash’s character. Bash works as a Fire Pilot in Western Canada that is dealing with increasing levels of wildfires, hence Fire Weather! 

I haven’t come across any good Non Fiction on fishing in the Bering Sea to pair with my Tessa Bailey, so if you know of any good books on that please help a girl out! 

Thank you for bearing with me (wink wink) as I ramble on about rereading and somehow get into wildfires, I hope your current read is treating you well! 

Yesterday I heard someone say that traditional publishing was boring. I sat there aghast as they explained why. They said that traditional publishing can get boring so they prefer indie books. It sat on my mind all day and into the night, as I sipped my tea I wondered how someone could get bored with traditional publishing.

It is a fact that indie publishing is full of brilliant authors who hone the craft through the books that they create. Indie authors are not restrained in the same way as traditionally published authors, for example they might not have to think of the book's commercial appeal the same way. Without the confines surrounding the trad pub structure authors are free to express their most creative selves in boundless ways. As with Indie music Indie authors set trends and shape culture. There is also the notion of accessibility, the Indie structure allows for anybody to create according to personal needs. This is a beautiful thing!

What sat heavy on my mind wasn’t the implication that indie is better than trad when both have equal strengths and weaknesses, it was the idea that books could ever be boring. Even as I’m typing this I am overwhelmed with a sense of incredulousness!

I am a lifelong reader who has made a career out of something that started as an escape, became a joy and then became a purpose. I am a naturally curious person, if I see something interesting I’ll pick it up and try it. During COVID-19 alone I read 200 books! This is not me attempting to humbly brag, this is simply just background information because not once in all my years of reading have I ever been bored. I actually rarely read a book that I don’t at least appreciate in some form.

With this context you can perhaps understand a little more why this revelation of boredom shocked me. I have been working with books for a long time now and my curiosity has both been my biggest asset and my financial downfall! I could go into just about any section in a bookshop and find a book that piques my interest in some way. I learned throughout the years to allow my curiosity to guide me from page to page across continents and genres and my life has been made all the richer for it.

You might be thinking that this is all well and good but what is the advice? My advice is to simply be curious. Although some may find that curiosity is not so simple, it is always worth following. I say this because I know with certainty that by only engaging with books that are familiar you might find yourself bored! Being bored with familiarity is not a reflection on what is published, it is perhaps merely a sign that it is time to try something new and to get curious.

We can very naturally gravitate to voices that sound like our own, I’m not perfect even I can find myself easily falling into reading patterns. I however have always believed that the fun and pleasure of reading comes from unfamiliarity. People experience the world in innumerable ways, one story can be told a thousand different times entirely dependent on who’s telling it. Engage with the choices you make in the bookshop, stop and think if something is new or interesting or maybe even just ask if you have ever read something like this before.

We as human beings are capable of such expansion in this life and expansion doesn’t just happen all at once in an explosion of shadow and smoke. Expansion happens incrementally bit by bit every time we choose something a little bit different. So the truest advice I can give is to be curious, engage with voices that sound different than yours and you might find yourself surprised at how easily the shackles of boredom are shed and how much fun you can have along the way.