Our book shop was made for a very specific purpose – browsing. Like some fantastical machine from a Jules Verne novel, stepping through the doors at Coles has always felt like you’re being transported to another world – a place of travel, of adventure, a place for learning, for entertainment, a place for just pootling around. And so it’s been lovely to welcome our customers back to the shop in Bicester this week, stepping aboard that fantastical machine for what we hope will be a wonderful journey.
As the clouds begin to part, and the doors begin to open, today sees the start of Independent Bookshop Week, a celebration of book shops on the High Streets of the land. We’ve been busy with fresh Signed Editions of a few favourite titles from a while ago – Kate Tempest’s ‘Running up the Wires’; a beautifully illustrated book of poetry from Chris Riddell and Isabella Tree’s ‘Wilding’, a story of what happens when her land is handed over to nature; our Signed Edition Pre-Order this week is for Matt Haig’s ‘The Midnight Library’; the thrills come from David Baldacci in ‘Walk the Wire’, the latest of his Amos Decker novels; there’s a writer we’re going to be hearing a lot from in the coming years, Naoise Dolan, her debut novel ‘Exciting Times’ is a corker; when it comes to swimming against the tide, the story of Ruqsana Begum is both inspiring and timely, a role model for all; Ben Aaronovitch’s novella, ‘The October Man’ is now available in paperback, ours have signed bookplates; we’ve added a few of the remaining Taschen Collectors Editions to the range at Coles including the extraordinary ‘Sharks’.
Buzz Aldrin Taschen Art Prints
This week we took delivery of our display copy of one of the Buzz Aldrin Taschen Art Prints – ‘A Man On The Moon’, these photographs are a truly amazing recording of an amazing event – more so when you consider they were taken more than 50 years ago.
After listening to some nonsense verse of Spike Milligan this week, I thought I’d go and seek out some of his poetry and came across this, the tender and quite lovely Summer Dawn, not quite what I expected to find, but glad I did.
My sleeping children are still flying dreams
in their goose-down heads.
The lush of the river singing morning songs
Fish watch their ceilings turn sun-white.
The grey-green pike lances upstream
Kale, like mermaid’s hair
points the water’s drift.
All is morning hush
and bird beautiful.
A few of our forthcoming Signed Editions have been given revised publication dates, Chris Frantz ‘Remain in Love’ is now expected around 21st July, and Jay Shetty’s ‘Think Like a Monk’ is now due in early September. For those customers waiting for Titan titles, thank you for your patience – we are expecting books to resume delivery to us in the coming weeks as their office gradually comes out of lock-down and their staff return.
As always, thank you for opening and reading this email and thank you for supporting ‘Independent Bookselling’ at Coles Books.
Travel well, travel by book – welcome aboard,
Nigel, Caroline and the team at Coles Books
