Welcome to 2023!
We love a fresh start at Booka. The whirlwind of Christmas trading is behind us. It’s time to look ahead to all the exciting books and events that will take place within the four walls of the shop and beyond.
Retreat into books with us as we ‘restore and re-story’ ourselves, easing into a New Year.
This week we have been tidying away the tinsel, dusting the shelves off and showcasing new titles. Tim of all trades is busily painting behind the counter on the first floor. We are hoping to bring you a pop of colour, that will add another dimension to the space as our business continues to evolve.
The start of the year is often a time for New Year’s Resolutions. Lots of people try to forge new habits and try new things.
At Booka, we want to use it to ‘restore and re-story’ ourselves. We are taking it slowly and focusing on putting back. We want to create a warm, relaxing atmosphere, a place for people to spend time and engage in conversations. A place to escape from the day to day, to take time to discover books that inspire, comfort and energise.
We recognise that, the first part of the year can often be a difficult and isolating time. The days are short and often the weather is at its coldest and bleakest.
We are all guilty of plunging ourselves into ‘austerity’ mode as a reaction to the over-indulgence and craziness of the festive season, but perhaps we should be kinder to ourselves and take time to reflect on what it is we really want.
Instead of taking away from who we are and what we like, we need to put back, to ‘restore’, re-engage with our ‘inner-wise’
Fear not, here at Booka we have been busily planning a range of events that will help to boost your mood and replenish your emotional, spiritual and physical well-being.
Books and well-being are at the heart of what we do and we begin our new year programme with a restorative evening to help you ‘Reclaim Your Comfort Zone’. Hosted by local author, Haulwen Nicholas, this will be a gentle evening event to help you reflect on your personality type and harness your individuality to plan for the year ahead.
Sometimes the hardest thing to do, is to give yourself space and time to reflect and tune in. We hope that this evening and the other events we have lined up will provide ways to do just that.
As a bookshop, stories are incredibly important to us. On a daily basis, we are engaging with our customers, developing relationships, finding out about people’s likes and dislikes. We recommend books that we love and ones we hope others will love too.
We have customers who use the bookshop everyday – for coffee, to buy books and purchase event tickets. They share their time and lives with us and are part of the bookshop community.
A bookshop is a place of healing – a place for people to dwell away from the stresses and realities of life. Books and bookshops as a sanctuary, a comfort zone on the High Street should definitely be seen as ‘essential’ to the infrastructure of society. We dispense a very particular type of medicine – human connection, word of mouth recommendation, a physical presence, a place to seek calm and a place to ‘Restore and re-story’ yourself through books.
These are the reasons we are booksellers and the reasons our customers come to us.
We are here to celebrate the transformative power of books.
Our purpose is to help everyone live a life made better through books.
So why not, take time to review what you read last year and let us help you to widen your reading or just add to your passion for books. Every month, our Manager and voracious reader Ruth, selects a ‘Book of the Month’ both fiction and non-fiction to recommend to our reading community. We showcase this in the shop and over our Social Media platforms and we often host events with the authors of our ‘Book of the Month’.
We are kicking off the year with ‘The Witches of Vardo’ by Anya Bergman. To quote Ruth’s review, this is ‘a powerful, feminist tale focusing on three women’s experiences of the 17th Century Witch trials on Norway’s Varanger Peninsula’.
Look out for our ‘Book of the Month’ next time you are in-store – it’s the perfect way to ‘re-story’ yourself by trying something new.
Our Book of the Month has been such a success that we are using it to create a ‘Passion for Books’ subscription which we will launch in February. You can subscribe to this on a 3, 6 or 12 month basis. Each month you will be sent a copy of our ‘Book of the Month’ fiction title along with a letter from Ruth featuring her review.
It’s a wonderful way to enjoy ‘the gift of reading’ either for yourself or for a loved one.
Our intention in this first quarter of the year, is to help replenish your energies through our programme of restorative events and carefully curated recommended reads. Look out for our ‘Restore and Re-Story’ yourself book strips on key titles throughout the shop.
I write this first blog of the year, as Tim and I sign off for some much-needed R&R ourselves. It’s time to take some of the advice we have written about above.
I am going to re-story myself with the following:
Nightwalking by John Lewis-Stempel – nature writing is such a great way to feel part of something bigger and put life into context. JLS is such a lyrical writer and the book is a totally beautiful package. I am going to celebrate the darkness with him.
House Arrest by Alan Bennett – I am part way through this and I am taking it with me to the Isle of Anglesey as that is what I hope we will do, hunker down with books and cosy blankets and possibly a glass of wine! I just love the day to day minutiae that he captures in this brief volume: the reminders of the people and things that are important to us and the daily happenings that bring us joy when times are tough.
The Things That We Lost by Jyoti Patel – a debut fiction novel by the winner of the #Merky Books New Writers Prize – a moving coming of age story that explores what it means to be a person of colour in Britain today. This is going to be my fiction fix.
Finally, I am also taking along:
Food for Life – The New Science of Eating Well by Tim Spector, because in my middle years, I have become obsessed with finding out more about nutrition. It de-bunks all the mis-information out there and shows us simply what we should eat to nourish our bodies and our minds.
Tim is taking quite a few ‘proofs’ (books which are not yet published) to get ahead of the game:
Sparrow by James Hynes which he has just started and is glued to. It’s a visceral and powerful tale of life for a young boy of no known origin as he navigates the last days of Pagan Rome. (publishing 4th May)
Shy by Max Porter – both of us are huge fans of Max’s powerful Novellas. He is the author of ‘Grief is the Thing with Feathers’ and ‘Lanny’. Described as ‘a novel about guilt, rage, imagination and boyhood. It is about being lost in the dark and realising you are not alone’. Sure to pack an emotional punch and a book we will be snatching from each other. (publishing 4th April)
Sarn Helen by Tom Bullough. We have an event with Tom on 9th February and so this is a great opportunity to ‘read before we meet’, Tom. It sounds epic – detailing Tom’s journey along ‘Helen’s Causeway’ – the old Roman Road that runs from the south coast of Wales to the north. The history of Wales, its people and landscape, melded with the modern day concerns of climate change which threaten the world we live in.
We will leave you with two recommendations for the start of the year:
Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor – Tim has loved this. A sweeping and dramatic tale of corruption and power in modern India. (out now)
Becky by Sarah May – a sensational tale of one woman’s ambition as she fights to transcend her traumatic childhood. It is a provocative and uncomfortable story of class, greed and the questionable morals of the 1980s newspaper landscape. I devoured it. (publishing 26th Jan)
Let us know what books you will be reading this January. Pop into the shop and write your recommendations on a strip for our ‘Re-Story Tree’.
We send you our most heart-felt wishes for a gentle ‘bookish’ transition into 2023.