Big Bearded Bookseller #124
currently reading 'Lockett & Wilde's Dreadfully Haunting Mysteries: The Ghosts of the Manor' by Lucy Strange and Pam Smy
It was strange to be working a week in my old branch, pleasant that I didn’t have an extra couple of hours commute added on to be honest and lovely reconnecting with some of the old regulars, but overall very strange.
For the last week I’ve been on holiday and have one further week holiday to go, nice and relaxing, today though I’m out for a haircut, beard trim, and the final part of a big tattoo!
What I’ve been up to these past two weeks.
It’s been a hard couple of weeks and a lot of that has been down to me and how I deal with things.
Apart from that though I’ve been working on formatting old posts on all the blogs and starting to put the links onto Bluesky, Instagram, and Twitter.
I’ve been building up the Instagram into a more coherent style over the last couple of weeks with less personal stuff in the grid which is going to be for book world related posts; reviews, interviews, directory pages, and bookish updates.
I’ve been adding the author and illustrator interview series onto here as well.
I’ve also been reading quite a bit but once more a lot of what I’ve read has left me a bit disappointed as a lot of it just wasn’t quite up to scratch but the Cult of the Lamb graphic novel was a great laugh and really brought the game onto the page.
Other news
Visited The Bowes Museum on a really looming weather day but it was so worth it as we went to see the ‘Kith and Kinship’ exhibition which placed works from Norman Cornish and L.S. Lowry together and we loved it, it was so well curated.
Often having similar subject works by each artist hung together you could see the similarity of thought, but execution and vision for the end product and how they saw the subjects were so different.
Recently added bookshops
The Book Nook, Stewarton
Hold Fast Bookshop, Leeds
Lost Books, California
Recently added publishers
nothing this fortnight
Recent book reviews
The History of Cinema (13/09/24)
Where the Daybreak Ends (17/09/24)
Cult of the Lamb (17/09/24)
Vampires Never Get Old (22/09/24)
A Mudlarking Year (26/09/24)
Other blog posts
Upcoming Books (14/09/24)
Realist Manifesto (18/09/24)
So Many Films… (22/09/24)
Tarot and Me (24/09/24)
Tarot Collection (24/09/24)
The Modern Goth Tarot (25/09/24)
Tarot Wish List (25/09/24)
Interview series
I run a series of interviews on the three main blogs I’ve got and am always on the lookout for more people to be involved, if you are interested why not look at the one related to you and get in touch.
I’m also thinking of setting up some questions for another coupole of categories in the book world; editors and agents but they may take some time to develop as I have to figure out what I personally would like to know about their roles and routes into those roles.
What’s happening in the next two weeks?
‘I would challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see you are unarmed!’ William Shakespeare
I’ll be 60 on Sunday…
Not sure how I feel about that to be totally honest.
I am actually stumped and will probably be doing a lot of thinking about that and how I approach things, but apart from that I’ve got a week off with a hired car and we’re going to see lots of art including returning to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and The Hepworth Museum in Wakefield.
We’ll also be searching out more Norman Cornish in Spennymoor and Bishop Auckland.
Most of all though is we will be having trips to the coast and dales since we are lucky enough to live near both.
Apart from that I’ll still be working on updating the Independent Publisher and Bookshop pages and getting them on Instagram and KoFi and adding new ones if I’ve time.
And, as always, if you have any news/offers/events you would like included in the newsletter, or know of any publishers or bookshops I’ve missed please email me at bigbeardedbookseller@gmail.com and I’ll get it on ASAP.
A reminder that a paid subscription to this newsletter is only the cost of one large coffee a month. This helps with lots of things but right now it would help with domain and hosting costs for the various projects.
If I could get 700 or so newsletter or Ko-Fi subscribers I could work on these projects full time including travelling to visit, film, and write about independent bookshops and publishers!
The links to the various projects can be found at: