Bloody Paperwork

When the shop closed at the end of January, I thought, "OK, that's that". A lovely person wanted to take on the lease for the shop, so I reckoned it'd get sorted in a few weeks.

I'm a simple soul. Sometimes, being a simple soul is great. But sometimes it isn't...

Today is June 27th. I am still paying rent for the shop. 

It's a bit of a tosser.

I should have known it might have taken longer, having experienced a similar thing when we tried to get the lease to the shop ourselves in 2008. If you want to read about our woes, we did a blog. It's here.

Anyway, whilst I really want to spend ALL my time banging on about books and trying to save the world from angry unicorns pretending to be rhinos, I've been spending a load of my time doing bloody paperwork trying to finalise the lease thing.

So, apologies to all the rhinos out there. And also soz about not smashing the world in the face about how ace books are in the last couple of weeks.

I'll be back in full action very soon.

Ta.

New Life - an update

I don't use this blog as much as I should.

This is my second post in as many days. This level of blogging can never last!

Anyway, it's a bit of a personal one.

It's kind of an update about how things are going.

The Big Green Bookshop (the physical bookshop)  closed at the beginning of this year.
Katie and I moved out of London to the south coast in January with our kids. It's been the best thing we've ever done. 

Katie and I had always wanted to live by the seaside, but having the shop and owning our flat in London, we felt a bit trapped.

Much as I loved the shop, it had kind of taken over my life. It was all I thought about. I woke up in the middle of the night worrying about what needed to be done. I got the train to the shop at stupid early o'clock to try and catch up with stuff. I didn't realise it at the time, but it was doing my head in.

I was not in a good way and it affected my life badly.

Thankfully, I have the most incredible girlfriend in the world and the most brilliant kids, who I love completely and have been nothing but amazing.

So, we did it. We moved.

And it has been incredible.
Katie now has a brilliant job, that she loves. The kids are really happy at their new school. And I am getting my priorities right. Yes, the Bookshop is ace, but there are far more important things. And I'm not going to ever forget that again.

Looking back, I thought things were OK. But they weren't. Now, I can focus on my family and our new life here. And that's really all that matters.

Don't let this stop you buying books from me, we need the dosh! But I thought it was important to let you know.

#buybooks

Twitter Book Club

Recently I had the idea that maybe I should try to do a @biggreenbooks Twitter Book Club.

Book Clubs at the Big Green Bookshop were really great.

The concept;

• Agree a book you're going to all read. 
• Buy it. 
• Read it. 
• Talk about it. (this is the important bit)
• Give it marks out of 10

So a couple of weeks ago I asked what people thought the first Twitter Book Club book should be. 

And here is the result. 

The winner is Circe by Madeline Miller. 

So, how does @biggreenbooks Twitter Book Club work?

Here's what I thought. 

We need to have some time to read the book, so let's set a date in early July to discuss the book. 

I have chosen Friday July 5th. Book chat will start at midday.

We can discuss the book on twitter without annoying everyone else who isn't involved. 

So I can set up a DM (direct message) group, so that nobody else has to put up with our book chat. 

If you want to join this group, send me a message using this hashtag #BGBookCirce 

You can send it to me any time between now and then. I'll add you to the group.

We can, of course still discuss it on normal Twitter, using the same hashtag. 

Most book groups meet for a couple of hours, but the beauty of #BGBookCirce is that the conversation can continue longer (you don't have to be around on July 5th, but you can catch up later and still get involved).

After the discussion, we will give marks out of 10 by Monday 8th July and the results will be announced on Tuesday 9th  July. 

I am a bookshop. I would like you to buy the book from me. So, if you'd like to get involved, please paypal £8.99 to biggreenbookshop@hotmail.com, using family and friends and then send me a DM, letting me know your address.

Alternatively, you can buy it from the website (it's £9.99 on there, cos paypal take a quid if you buy it this way and i'm not charging P+P). Link HERE.

I will do a new shortlist for August's book just before the meeting, so that if you want to join in again, you'll know what the next book is. 

If you have any other ideas, i'd be delighted to hear them. This is all new to me, so I want to get it right. 

Hope this all sounds good.