January News

Here we are at the end of January already, usually a month that seems really long, but this year it has hurtled by. There’s been lots happening behind the scenes at the bookshop from a new floor in the community space through to some new products lines in the shop, as well as the first few meetings of our Book Buying working Group, reviews with our new team members as well as all our regular hires and events along with some new ones.

We started the first in our series of We Can Learn to … events with a really successful collage workshop with Anton, one of our regular volunteers. Everyone enjoyed the session and a collage club is in the offing. We also had our first self hosted author event with Denis Wong and his book Departure and Return, which was really well attended and generated some great discussion. We welcomed back Vegout vegan cafe and our Meeting Places friends. Open Mic night was back as well as the University hosted Comedy night and our Writers group was back for their first meeting of 2024.

It has been a hectic month for the team, particularly for Clare, Suzanne and Amelia, as we take on some of the roles and tasks that Ellen and Liz were doing, as well as juggling all our existing commitments and continuing to train the new team members. We have found a new book buyer though and will let you all know who the new team member is very soon.

In all of this there was a bit of a mix up on Saturday when Clare completely forgot to come in and open up the shop. Sincere apologies to all who were stood outside the shop waiting. It did turn out OK and the sales for the day were the best for a Saturday so far this year which we really need after lower sales at Christmas.

More bookshop stories next month. If you are a bit of an amateur newshound and would be interested in writing monthly or weekly blogs about the stories of the shop, do drop us a line clare@octoberbooks.org