Bookablog

Here we showcase the very best of what Booka has to offer. Read reviews of the latest bestsellers. Find out in advance about our exciting events. Discover what our visiting authors have to say. Be inspired by our book-buying guides and helpful articles. Learn something new or revisit an old favourite. Find out more about our team and the work that goes on behind the scenes. Booka is proud to be an independent bookshop and we have never been afraid to speak out. Join us now and subscribe for all our latest updates, posts, events and news.

Guest Blog – Penelope Slocombe

Posted on 1st August 2024 by Penelope

Guest Blog – Penelope Slocombe

The Books That Made Me  I have always been drawn to stories of journeys – The Hobbit, The Chronicles of Narnia, Peter Pan. As an only child growing up on a remote Scottish island, reading was a companion, a doorway to adventure, to faraway places, to the unexpected...

Guest Blog: Andrés N. Ordorica

Posted on 4th July 2024 by Andrés N.

Guest Blog: Andrés N. Ordorica

The Books That Made Me I have been a lover of books for as long as I can remember. Books afforded a younger me, quiet and aloof, a world of possibilities with infinite braver versions of myself. The more I read the more I realised it was not just the books themselves...

Guest Blog: Wyl Menmuir

Posted on 25th May 2024 by Wyl

Guest Blog: Wyl Menmuir

The Books That Made Me The Heart of The Woods starts and (spoilers) ends just outside Oswestry. It begins in the woodland my father planted just over a decade ago, just a stone’s throw from Booka. I’ve watched with no small amazement as the thousand native broadleaf...

Guest Blog: Kiran Sidhu

Posted on 18th May 2024 by Kiran

Guest Blog: Kiran Sidhu

The Books That Made Me It was my father who taught me the value of books. Our home was filled with books on poetry, philosophy, history and politics. In my grown-up years, my father told me that he always thought that if our home had a plentiful bookshelf, one day,...

Guest Blog: Samuel Burr

Posted on 11th May 2024 by Samuel

Guest Blog: Samuel Burr

The Books That Made Me My earliest reading experience involves the charming picture book Not Now Bernard by David McKee. My dad used to read it to me at bedtime. It’s the story of a boy who claims there is an enormous purple monster in the house, and his parents who...

Celebrating 6 Months of Booka Bridgnorth

Posted on 25th April 2024 by Carrie

Celebrating 6 Months of Booka Bridgnorth

6 months ago, we were one bookshop. Now we are two. It seems incredible to us, even after being booksellers for 14 years, that we now have two bookshops. It felt as though we talked about it for years, then couldn’t find the right location, the right building....

Guest Blog: Clare Mackintosh

Posted on 12th March 2024 by Clare

Guest Blog: Clare Mackintosh

Clare Mackintosh – I Promise it Won’t Always Hurt Like This In December 2006, my five-week-old son died. I was a police officer back then, calm in a crisis and hardened to tragedy. I had delivered bad news to more doorsteps than I could count; watched blood...

Guest Blog: Katherine Arden

Posted on 11th March 2024 by Katherine

Guest Blog: Katherine Arden

The Books That Made Me When I was a little girl, my favourite author was Robin McKinley. She wrote fairy tale retellings; the first book of hers I read was Beauty, a novel-length retelling of beauty and the beast. But she also wrote epic fantasy, two marvellous books...

Guest Blog: Dave Andrews

Posted on 1st March 2024 by Dave

Guest Blog: Dave Andrews

Writing Crime Fiction as a Local Author Bolt From The Black is my second Oswestry-based murder mystery and my thirteenth book. It follows Each Slow Dusk, the first Inspector Probert novel, in which a body is discovered at the foot of the statue of Wilfred Owen in Cae...

Books of the Month: March

Posted on 1st March 2024 by Ruth

Books of the Month: March

Fiction: The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden Astonishing, haunting and brutal, Katherine Arden’s WW1 historical fantasy, The Warm Hands of Ghosts, is a tale of endurance, duty, family, and stupid dumb hope; of the bonds between siblings, of the ties which bind...

Guest Blog: Lizzie Pook

Posted on 22nd February 2024 by Lizzie

Guest Blog: Lizzie Pook

The Books That Made Me I was an avid reader as a child and remember the shelves at home being filled with all sorts of treasures – Helen Nicholl and Jan Pieńkowski’s Meg and Mog books, Janet and Allan Ahlberg, Shirley Hughes. My most prized possession was a copy of...

Books of the Month: February 2024

Posted on 1st February 2024 by Ruth

Books of the Month: February 2024

Fiction: Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge by Lizzie Pook Sensational and gripping, Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge is a breathless romp, a tale of adventure, hidden identity, sisters, secrets and revenge. Two years ago, Maude Horton’s brilliant, vivacious sister...

Guest Blog: Vanessa Chan

Posted on 17th January 2024 by Vanessa

Guest Blog: Vanessa Chan

The Books That Made Me Books (and the rooms that contained them) were my first babysitters. As soon as I could read, my parents would drop me off at bookshops and libraries, or at neighbourhood homes that rented out rooms full of books. I would spend hours with these...

Books of the Month: January 2024

Posted on 1st January 2024 by Ruth

Books of the Month: January 2024

Fiction: The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan Heartbreaking and raw, ‘The Storm We Made’ is a vivid portrayal of pre-war British-colonised Malaya (now Malaysia), its’ invasion by Japan and ruthless regime it endured during World War 2. Alternating between 1935, when one...

Bookseller Books of the Year

Posted on 1st January 2024 by Booka

Bookseller Books of the Year

Carrie’s Books of the Year are… So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan Yoga for Stiff Birds by Marion Deuchars Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes Wild Hope by Donna Ashworth Shot with Crimson by Nicola Upson Sarn Helen by Tom Bullough, illustrated by Jackie Morris...

Books of the Month: December

Posted on 1st December 2023 by Ruth

Books of the Month: December

Fiction Book of the Month: The Christmas Jigsaw Murders by Alexandra Benedict On 19th of December, renowned puzzle setter, loner and Christmas sceptic Edie O’Sullivan finds a hand-delivered present on her doorstep. Unwrapping it, she finds a jigsaw box and, inside,...

Guest Blog – Nicola Upson

Posted on 23rd November 2023 by Nicola

Guest Blog – Nicola Upson

The Books That Made Me The first book I ever truly loved was The Swish of the Curtain by Pamela Brown. It was the story that opened my eyes to the obsessive magic of reading, and it’s the only book that I’ve ever begun again as soon as I finished it. It stood out from...

Books of the Month: November

Posted on 1st November 2023 by Ruth

Books of the Month: November

Fiction: Shot With Crimson by Nicola Upson Clever, fascinating and filled with intrigue, Shot With Crimson is one of Nicola Upson’s Josephine Tey Mysteries (a superb crime series which can be read in any order). Their protagonist is real life novelist Josephine Tey, a...

Books of the Month: October

Posted on 2nd October 2023 by Ruth

Books of the Month: October

Fiction: The Book of Beginnings by Sally Page From the author of the phenomenal bestseller The Keeper of Stories, comes an utterly beautiful and charming novel full of mystery and secrets waiting to be uncovered… Returning to her Uncle Wilbur’s stationery shop, brings...

Building a Bookshop

Posted on 10th September 2023 by Carrie

Building a Bookshop

To the Future and Beyond The word is out, the dream is becoming a reality. Booka Bridgnorth is being built.  Tim of all trades is busy painting the shop-front, local builders GMC have started the shop-fit. We are on our way to being the proud owners of two independent...