Twitter Book Club - November's book choice

In my last post, I explained that from now on our Book Club was going to be choosing books from Independent publishers from now on. 

You can read about it HERE

Bluemoose books were our first publisher of choice. 

SO NOW.....

Twitter has voted and a book has been chosen to discuss in November.

It is this book. 

Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession. 

Bluemoose got copies to me VERY quickly, so I'm posting them out now. 

If you want to get involved in Twitter Book Club, please let me know by tweeting me with the hashtag #BGBookClub. 

We'll be discussing it on Tuesday November 24th, so there's a bit time to read it. 

 I don't know if i've mentioned it, but I am a bookshop, so i'd quite like it if you bought the book from me.

 
If you would like to do this, please paypal £8.99 to biggreenbookshop@hotmail.com, using family and friends and then send me a DM with the word "LEONARD", letting me know the address you'd like me to send it to.

Postage and packing is FREE. 

I'll post the books out as and when you place your orders. 

If you have any questions, please do get in touch. 

Ta, 
Simon

Twitter Book Club - Supporting Independent publishers

Our Twitter Book Club has made a decision.

We want to highlight a different independent publisher each time we choose a book. This is good for a number of reasons. 

1. Independent publishers need as much support as they can get.

2. The books they publish are less likely to get the exposure than those of the "big" publishers.

3. I can order the books directly from the publishers, thus maximising how much money they make from the sales.

4. I like dealing with independent publishers.

(they also publish brilliant books!)

So, from now on, the chosen publisher will pick four of their titles for us to vote for on a Twitter poll, to decide which book we'll be reading next. 

The first publisher we’ve chosen is Bluemoose, and their co-founder Kevin Duffy has kindly sent four possible choices. 
I think that whatever we chose, we’ll be in for a treat. 

HERE is a link to their website which gives you more information about the publisher and their books btw.

They are @Ofmooseandmen on Twitter. 

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I’m about to put a poll up on Twitter, but the choice for the first book is between these four titles.

I've added links to each of them, so you can check them out.

Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession
The Sound Mirror by Heidi James
Should We Fall Behind by Sharon Duggal
Saving Lucia by Anna Vaught

And here is a picture of the covers. 

PLEASE VOTE. 

A reminder of how Twitter Book Club works. 

1.       We choose a book to read via a Twitter poll

2.       We read it.

3.       We talk about it (this is the important bit) via Twitter.

4.       We give it marks out of 10.

That's pretty much it. 

I'll get the results of the Twitter poll tomorrow (Wednesday 4th November) and Bluemoose will then send me copies of the chosen book, which I shall post out to everyone who wants to join in, if they give me dosh.

We'll need time to read the book, and I know this is only 3 weeks time, but I've chosen Tuesday November 24th as the date of the meeting. Book chat will start at midday. 

WE CAN DO IT.

 

I’ll set up a DM (direct message) group, so that people who’ve read the book and want to talk about it can chat about it on Twitter, without filling up their timeline.

 

If you’d like to join this group group, send me a message using this hashtag #BGBookClub

You can send it to me any time between now and November24th. I'll add you to the group.

We can, of course chat about the book on normal Twitter, using the same hashtag.

 

Most book groups meet for a couple of hours, but the lovely thing about Twitter Book Club was that people were able to chat about the book over a couple of days, so you won't have to be around on the 24th, you can catch up later and still get involved. Also unlike normal Book Clubs, nobody can look at you disapprovingly as you neck the last glass of wine in the bottle.

 

After the discussion, we will give marks out of 10 by Thursday 26th November and the results will be announced on Friday 27th.

I am a bookshop. I would like you to buy the book from me. So once the book has been chosen, I’ll let you know how to do this. This is not obligatory, obvs. The important thing for me, is that as many people who want to, get the chance to be involved.

If you have any questions, tweet me!

Twitter Book Club - My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. THE FEEDBACK

 

So, a couple of weeks ago we had our Twitter Book Club discussion. 

Here's the book we discussed.

 My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

And I tell you what, it was a lot of fun. 

Around 30 people got involved in our Twitter chat. 

I would very much like to thank Adele Joliffe (@Jolly1975) for writing up the notes to our discussion.

This precis of our discussion is about one million time better than I could have come up with. 

Thanks Adele. 

So, here's what we thought....

Likes

Structure: how the timeline jumped back and forth and we learned more about the history of their relationship (and perhaps Ayoola's motivations / sensibilities)

It was light and undemanding, easy to read - many liked the bitesize chapter format

The cover (although of course that shouldn't matter!)

Liked the unpacking of the father/daughters dynamic which added credbile context

The strong sense of family (and sisterly) loyalty

It got you to ask yourself the question: would you cover up a murder for a loved one? 

Other thoughts / questions

The title and premise perhaps suggested a twist / reveal, but none was forthcoming.

Perhaps not a dislike, more a disservice done to the book, but all the hype set expectations very high and in comparison the book felt like it didn't quite deliver on that promise. Similarly the book's been described as a 'literary sensation' which set up an expectation of more challenging prose.

It’s billed as a comedy book and reviews say it is 'hilarious' but many readers in the group didn't see the comedy (or enough comedy for it to be summarised as 'hilarious’).

A few readers would have liked more of a sense of the city / surroundings / neighbourhood etc. However interestingly, there were some important cultural points here: for those readers feeling they wanted more of a sense of place/surroundings or to have the Nigerian culture more richly present in the book, there is an interesting question: are you just feeling that is lacking because it's 'other' for you? However, for others this was a positive because 'international' books can get too hooked on trying to tell you about the place. This is a human story and we should connect with the people, regardless of where the action is taking place.

Linked to that, there was general interest in a Nigerian cultural POV on the book - was this to some extent struggling to resonate because we're struggling to buy the deep sisterly loyalty that Korede continues to show in the face of ungratefulness and what sometimes seems like pure spite from Ayoola? (The book was featured on R4's Book Club and here (as well as in another interview as quoted in the discussion) the author did say that the family / big sister unconditional loyalty is a strong, recognisable Nigerian cultural characteristic). 

The flip side of being bitesize / undemanding is that for some it felt a little one-dimensional: There was a sense that the plot, characters and motivations had the potential to be explored more in a deeper, longer novel. 

There was a super-interesting theory that perhaps Korede doesn't have a sister and Ayoola is her alter-ego (because they were such opposites) OR she was the serial killer and projected it all on to Ayoola to deal with it psychologically… but we think probably that’s not the case! 

So, we had to give it a score out of 10. 

And we did. 

And then we added all those scores together and divided it by the number of people who gave a score

And this number is called the average. 

And the average is the score we gave the book. 

 and the score was. 

6.5

So, that's it for this month. 

Tomorrow, Twitter will be picking next month's book. 

Keep your eye's peeled (not literally, obvs), for how you can get involved. 

S

Twitter Book Club - The Result

 On Saturday I relaunched our Twitter Book Club. It was all very exciting, you should have been there. 

I ran a Twitter Poll so you could decide what book we'd be reading. 

Here is the result. 

Yes, the winner, by quite a considerable margin was...

 

My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite.

So, what's next?

Well, if you want to get involved in Twitter Book Club, I would encourage you to read the book. 

Also, please let me know by tweeting me with the hashtag #BGBookClub. 

We'll be discussing it on Monday October 5th, so there's plenty of time to read it. 

 I don't know if i've mentioned it, but I am a bookshop, so i'd quite like it if you bought the book from me. 

If you'd like to do this, please paypal £8.99 to biggreenbookshop@hotmail.com, using family and friends and then send me a DM with the word "SISTER", letting me know the address you'd like me to send it to.

Postage and packing is FREE. 

I'll post the books out as soon as possible. 

If you have any questions, please do get in touch. 

Ta, 

Simon

Twitter Book Club. It's back. (#BGBookClub)

Last year I had an idea that I should try to do a @biggreenbooks Twitter Book Club.

And it was a load of fun.

It was a really simple concept.

 

1.       Choose a book to read via a twitter poll

2.       Read it.

3.       Talk about it (this is the important bit)

4.       Give it marks out of 10

And it all went really well with some great chats about some rather marvellous books. Then stuff (stuff) happened and it kind of ground to a halt.

 

But, it’s time to ungrind, because, whilst stuff is still happening, it seems likely that stuff is going to be happening for the foreseeable future, and i'm tired of letting stuff get in the way.

So.

Welcome back to the Twitter Book Club

It’s now the end of August and we’ll need time to read the book so need to have some time to choose and read the book, so let's set a date in early October to discuss the book.

I have chosen Monday October 5th. Book chat will start at midday.

 

I’ll set up a DM (direct message) group, so that people who’ve read the book and want to talk about it can chat about it on Twitter, without filling up their timeline.

 

If you’d like to join this group group, send me a message using this hashtag #BGBookClub

You can send it to me any time between now and October 5th. I'll add you to the group.

We can, of course chat about the book on normal Twitter, using the same hashtag.

 

Most book groups meet for a couple of hours, but the lovely thing about Twitter Book Club was that people were able to chat about the book over a couple of days, so you won't have to be around on October 5th, you can catch up later and still get involved. Also unlike normal Book Clubs, nobody can look at you disapprovingly as you snaffle the last glass of wine in the bottle.

 

After the discussion, we will give marks out of 10 by Thursday 8th October and the results will be announced on Friday 9th.

I am a bookshop. I would like you to buy the book from me. So once the book has been chosen, I’ll let you know how to do this. This is not obligatory, obvs. The important thing for me, is that as many people who want to, get the chance to be involved.

Right.

First thing we need to do is choose a book.

I’m about to put a poll up on Twitter, but the choice for the first book is between these four titles.

1.       Mr Loverman – Bernadine Evaristo

2.       The Mothers – Brit Bennett

3.       My Sister the Serial Killer – Oyinkan Braithwaite

4.       Nickel Boys – Colson Whitehead

 

This poll will be up for 24 hours. Please vote and share as the more people who know about it, the better it’ll be!
 
If you have any other ideas, i'd be delighted to hear them. I have a plan to turn this into a Zoom book club, but let’s not run before we can walk eh?
 
Hope this all sounds good.

Hello, are we open?? *spoiler alert* YES.

At about 11am today one of our main suppliers (Gardners) announced that they were closing, due to the Coronavirus pandemic. 

Gardners are excellent and have been keeping us indie bookshops updated on how they were doing throughout all this. They'd preempted some of the issues that other business had been facing and were still supplying shops and arranging for books to be posted to customers in a timely and efficient way. 

They've been a bit of a lifesaver. 

But, quite rightly, they made this decision. 

Now that they are temporarily closed, stock availability is not going to be as great. 

I'm still able to get books, but certainly not the range I could before this happened. 

BUT I CAN STILL GET BOOKS. 

If Amazon can still sell 'em, I can't see why I can't (Jeff must be quaking in his slippers). 

So, here is stuff I'd like to tell you. 

All orders placed before March 30th will be delivered (according to Gardners). I'm checking this now, and the orders are still being processed, so fear not. 

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I'm still sending out books each month for The Big Green Book Club, our monthly subscription service, where I post out a book a month, based on the kind of books you enjoy reading. 

I might not be able to wrap them (as I'm running low on wrapping paper. And priorities!), but they're still going out. 

So, if you want to join, you can

  HERE!

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I'm still going to be supplying a Library for Shelter. 

So far, with your help, we've raised an extra £200 (at least), so once they can accommodate the books, i'll be getting them posted off. 

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In these slightly awkward times, I would appreciate you joining my PATREON more than ever!

I will try and make it worth your while, I promise. 

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I will still be doing #buyastrangerabook. 

Due to the more limited stock availability, this might be a bit more challenging, but we shall try!

It seems like my blogpost is running out of ink, so i'd better stop. 

Thanks for reading and supporting indie booksellers. 

IT MEANS EVERYTHING!

Building A Library for Shelter

For the last couple of years Big Green Books has done this thing called #BuyShelterABook.

It’s something we do before Christmas and the idea is to try and raise money so that we can send books to Shelter, to help the people they support have a better time.

Thanks to your generosity, we’ve been able to send over £5,000 worth of books to them.

I am in awe of the work that Shelter does and wanted to do something a little longer term, so I had an idea. Why don’t I start and sponsor a Shelter library?

So, I had a meeting with Hannah and Amy from Shelter, and it’s going to happen!

The first Shelter library (I hope there will be more in future) will be set up in their London hub.

This is how it’s going to work.

Each month, I’ll send a selection a books to Shelter for the library. This selection will be chosen each month based on the requests of the Shelter team.

Unlike most libraries, there’s no need for the books to be returned, as there’ll be times when it’s simply not possible. This is why I want to keep supplying books on a monthly basis, to keep the library well stocked.

Big Green Books has a Patreon. The money I get from this helps me do stuff like #buyastrangerabook and send books to schools who may need them.

As well as continuing to do these things, I've agreed to use a third of the money I make from the Patreon to buy books for the Shelter Library.

I’ve also set up an option on the website, so that, if you’d like to help, but would rather not join the Patreon, you can do so.

HERE IS THE LINK

If it proves successful, it may be that we try and roll this out to other Shelter hubs around the country.

I’m really excited about this project, and hopefully in the near future, there’ll be ways that people can donate books directly too. But this is a start and if you can help, I’d be really grateful.

The original idea was to send the first lot of books at the end of April, but with things as they are right now, this may change
. However, I want to get this project off the ground now, and as Hannah from Shelter said to me, "while there's a lot going on at the moment, it’s great that we’ve got exciting things like this to look forward to for our hub and our clients."

Oops, that shouldn't have happened.

There's a reason I've been a little quiet on Twitter recently. 

On January 21st, I went to WH Smith to buy a copy of the Beano (for my kids obvs), and when I went to pay for it, my card was declined. 

Oh, that's odd, I thought and I paid with some spare cash I had in my bag. 

Then, a little later in the day, I found that I couldn't access my Paypal account. 

Oh, that's VERY odd, I thought. 

So I logged into my online bank account to see what the heck was wrong. 

It all looked fine, but it seemed that I couldn't transfer any money, or take any money out. 

So I gave my bank a call. 

After a few security questions and pleasantries, my bank informed my the The Big Green Bookshop Ltd had been dissolved and all the assets of the business were now the property of "The Crown". 

And sure enough, I looked on the Companies House website and there it was. 

Well, I don't know if you can imagine the feeling, but it wasn't pleasant. 

I had bills to pay, I had to pay my suppliers on the 31st January and I had a series of direct debits and standing orders to account for, and also there was the obvious stuff like rent and food and all that. 

And I couldn't access any money. 

Yikes!

So the following morning I spoke to Companies House, and they were very helpful indeed and explained the reasons why it happened. 

It seems that it happens quite often, and they also explained how to resolve the situation. 

Then I had a lovely chat with my accountant...who then got to work at sorting this monumental disaster out. 

To cut a long story short(ish), on Thursday January 30th, after brilliant work from the people at Companies House, The Big Green Bookshop Ltd became active again!

It has cost a little over £1,000 and has been something of a distraction from bookselling, but I can now officially tell you that, as of about 11.05 this morning, I finally have access to the bank account and things are back to relative normality. 

The bank has been amazing and what could have taken weeks, they sorted out for me in a matter of days.

As well as all the thanks in the world to the bank and to Companies House, I would like to give a special mention to Laura (@lozziepop89), who came to my rescue on Twitter after i'd just found out, despite being at a Stormzy gig at the time. 

So, there are lessons to be learned. 

I hope I have learned them. 

Anyway, I thought I should probably tell you.