Sorry for the silence. I’m not sure if I mentioned but I opened a bookshop.
Let’s just say the first two weeks have been…quite busy. The team and I have made 314 coffees, poured 115 glasses of wine, sold 198 tote bags and thousands of books. The hardest thing has been getting books back on shelves quick enough - which is a pretty good problem to have. (Even so, after that fortnight, I think I’d like to claim the 116th glass of wine. Actually, make it a bottle.)
So please forgive me if these updates become a little less frequent, at least as the pace only builds until Christmas. (Do come and say hello, though: we’re open at 71 Balham High Road every day apart from Monday, 10am-6pm - and til 9pm Thursday-Saturday.)
But I wanted to share these pictures of the bookshop in action, and three things I thought you might enjoy:
Join us for our first events
I’m very excited with the line-up for our first ever events in the bookshop. If you fancy joining us for any of the following, more information and tickets are here.
Craig Brown (2nd Nov) - the mischievous satirist, critic and author of Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princes Margaret and One, Two, Three, Four: The Beatles in Time will be joining us to discuss his latest collection, Haywire: The Best of Craig Brown
Fatima Manji (15 Nov) - the Channel 4 News journalist and presenter will discuss her book Hidden Heritage: Rediscovering Britain’s Relationship with the Orient, a journey across Britain’s cultural landmarks as a nation grapples with its identity and the legacy of empire
Marina Hyde (30 Nov) - the Guardian columnist will discuss the perfectly normal state of contemporary British politics and her new collection, What Just Happened?!: Dispatches from Turbulent Times
The backstory of Backstory
Jimmy McLoughlin quizzed me on the transition from newsroom to bookshop, and on Backstory’s first few days, for his podcast, Jimmy’s Jobs. You can listen here.
The inaugural Backstory chart
So…what’s selling? Here’s our inaugural top 10 from the opening fortnight. The Booker Prize shortlist has flown out, unsurprisingly, as has lots and lots of fiction. And, apart from the new Richard Osman and the so-inexpensive-and-slim-it-may-as-well-be-a-paperback Small Things Like These, they’re all paperbacks. (Hardbacks have been selling, but, at £20 or £25, they don’t fly out the way paperbacks do.)
A couple of things made me smile. One was that the last book Clive James completed before he died, an anthology of poetry to “get by heart”, outsold even the mighty Osman. The other: that we sold dozens and dozens of copies of Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, just a great book that I love even though it was published four years ago. We’re talking about it in our inaugural book club tomorrow, but lots of the sales were to people who aren’t attending. It’s nice to see that if you love something and shout about it, people respond.
Anyway, here’s the list:
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley
The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman
Treacle Walker by Alan Garner
The Trees by Percival Everett
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
Speak soon,
Tom
Just discovered your newsletter and oh! The greedy delight in seeing your bookshop is in London. I can't wait to visit in the near future.
I'm very happy for you, Tom! That was a lot of hard work, but you soldiered on and now it is finally here. You deserve to be very, very proud.