Books Books Books

Happy birthday Books Books Books! The bookshop turned 15 recently and, like all teenagers, it’s is hard to deal with sometimes, and a sublime pleasure at others. To mark the occasion, we’ve had some spiffy new bags printed and would like to invite you to tea on Saturday, 2nd December anytime for 2pm until close at 6pm. As well as serving the most delicious cake known to humanity we are also organising a treasure hunt. You will have to answer a number of book-related questions either through the sheer power of your literature knowledge, or by finding the appropriate book in the shop. All entries will be put in a draw for book tokens and other prizes. And if the promise of tea, cake and book-swag is not enough to tempt you, then all of our books will be offered with a 15% discount throughout the day! Signing up isn’t obligatory, but it would be useful if only to make sure we have enough of the chocolatey stuff. You can do so here: https://doodle.com/meeting/participate/id/e92P3Vza If you can’t make it – maybe you’re flying to Fiji that day, or it’s too late to cancel your daughter’s wedding – then Rachel and…

Anybody who has read the DSM entry on Autism Spectrum Disorder will know it lists deficits in areas of communication and interaction. But what it is really like to view life from behind the autistic lens? This was the question psychologist and psychotherapist Marie-Laure Del Vecchio asked when she, and co-writer and photographer Joe James, starting collecting stories from people on the autistic spectrum. The result is The Autistic Experience: Silenced Voices Finally Heard. Sometimes sad, sometimes funny, often shocking, these stories from people across the globe explore all aspects of autistic life – from the earliest childhood memories to the challenges facing the autistic parent or grandparent. From school days to office life, from teenagers to those in their seventies, across all genders, from people who are homeless to NASA scientists to Olympic medallists, A graduate of UNIL, Marie-Laure set up her own practice in Lausanne two and a half years ago. In her professional life, she seeks to value human diversity, particularly by working with neurodivergent people. She chose to move away from a pathologising view of autism and to focus instead on the distinctive features of this neurotype, and approaches autism as a way of functioning, a way…

Rebelling against the idea that ‘If you’re not online, you don’t exist,’ Jonathan created a pocket-sized review which collects together poetry, essays, fiction, illustration and fine art for those “wishing to maintain contemplative life in the digital age.’” Editions are only available in print and exclusively in bookshops. All correspondence with the publisher is conducted by post rather, and their single webpage simply lists two mailing addresses, one in Freibury Germany, the other in Austin, Texas.  Matthew will be chatting to Jonathan on Tuesday, 23rd May at the bookshop on the role and relevance of Printed Books in the Digital Age. Doors open at 18.00 and we’ll start the conversation at around 19.00.  If you would like to join us – and I hope you will! – please sign up via Doodle – or send us a letter. As always, there will be drinks and snacks and friendly people to chat to (plus a bookshop to explore).  Jonathan Simons is the founding editor of offline publishing house Analog Sea and its literary journal, The Analog Sea Review. As a poet and essayist, he has written for publications including The London Magazine, PN Review, El País, subTerrain Magazine, and The Analog Sea Review. His work has been covered by,…

For this newsletter, I’m recommending books by two of my favourite authors, who I’ve most definitely mentioned and recommended before, however these particular book recommendations are a more hopeful, cheerful sort of book The Monk & Robot Duology by Becky Chambers I know I’ve recommended A Psalm for the Wild-Built before, but this duology (the second book is A Prayer for the Crown-Shy) is one of the best things I’ve read in a while. I’ve purchased at least three or four copies – and it inspired one of my giftees to purchase Becky Chambers body of work in its entirety (which I whole-heartedly support!). It may be listed as science fiction, but I think it’s essential reading for everyone. This series gives hope for the future, and is written in the new, more hopeful solarpunk genre. The first book is dedicated to ‘anybody who could use a break’, while the second is for ‘anybody who doesn’t know where they’re going’, both of which are sentiments that seem more and more prevalent these days. These are novellas, clocking in at 160 pages each, and are refreshingly philosophical books (in beautiful hardcover editions), and I can’t recommend them highly enough. This series…

Thank you for all your support this year. Please note the shop will be closed from noon, 24th December until 9am, 3rd January. Rachel and I will be catching up on our reading. Merci pour tout votre soutien cette année. Veuillez noter que la boutique sera fermée du 24 décembre à midi au 3 janvier à 9 heures. Rachel et moi allons rattraper nos lectures.

Genre: Sci-fi This book is a soft sci-fi story about multiverse travel – but you can only travel to universes where you’re dead. It’s also a dystopian novel, and explores themes of class and privilege – because only the poor, from outside the walled city of the wealthy, are likely to be dead in other realities and therefore able to travel to them.  My mother used to say I was born reaching, which is true. She also used to say it would get me killed, which it hasn’t. Not yet, anyway.’Born in the dirt of the wasteland, Cara has fought her entire life just to survive. Now she has done the impossible, and landed herself a comfortable life on the lower levels of the wealthy and walled-off Wiley City. So long as she can keep her head down and avoid trouble, she’s on a sure path to citizenship and security – on this world, at least. Of the 380 realities that have been unlocked, Cara is dead in all but 8. Cara’s parallel selves are exceptionally good at dying – from disease, turf wars, or vendettas they couldn’t outrun – which makes Cara wary, and valuable. Because while multiverse travel…

Genre: Solarpunk / Sci-fi   This little novella packs a punch for its size, and it was a refreshing and hopeful read. Tor Books commissioned Becky Chambers to write a two book novella series in the solarpunk genre, which looks forward to a sustainable future, where humanity has managed to solve the major contemporary challenges, particularly climate change. It won a Hugo award this year.   It’s been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honour the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of ‘what do people need?’ is answered.   The dedication of this book reads “For anybody who could use a break.”, and this book is that. It is a philosophical look at the purpose and meaning of life, and a comforting slice of life, and hope for the future we might have. I highly recommend it.   In stock, CHF 22.50

Zoe Perrenoud will be in the bookshop on Saturday, July 30th from 2-4pm to sign copies of her new book, Bloodlender! Zoe came into the bookshop ten years ago, when we were back on Rue de la Mercerie. She was just finishing up a writing course, and said that she would write a book and hold an event in the bookshop. We are thrilled that the event is finally coming to fruition with BLOODLENDER! An ancient magic. A secret garden. A deadly curse. Haunted by her father’s unsolved murder, all sixteen-year-old Sophie wants is to keep a low profile. Instead, there’s a dangerous magic stirring in her veins… and she has no idea how to stop it. After she accidentally puts her mother in a coma, Sophie is forced to move in with the elusive Delville family, whose historic French manor holds secrets even darker than hers. Their son, Gauthier, is dying from a mysterious illness, while deep in the abandoned garden, old ghosts are stirring.  As she struggles to control her powers, Sophie learns that she is Gauthier’s last hope. But when new evidence about her father’s death threatens to shatter their growing bond, she faces the ultimate dilemma: get revenge or save the…

A while ago I got a subscription to an independent publisher in the UK called Influx Press. I read the quietly brilliant The Country Will Bring Us No Peace (Matthieu Simard), then Steve Hollyman’s Lairies, which seemed to be my life in the 90’s reflected back to me. Then I got in the post a slim book with a strange black and white photograph on the cover… . This was In the Pines by Paul Scraton and I was an instant convert. It is a collection stories that take place in an unnamed town surrounded by pines and infused with burning nostalgia. Reading it made me feel as if my favourite characters from the books I read in my twenties had grown into slightly damaged yet nuanced adults who could not help but pick at the scars of their younger selves. The black and white photograph on the cover was taken in collaboration with Eymelt Sehmer, using a 170-year-old technique of collodion wet plate photography and there are more photographs within. One of the delights of this book is the way the narrative of the text and the medium of the photos speak to each other, as if to highlight…

I first interviewed Paul Lynch around seven years ago when his novel Black Snow was a finalist for the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger. I loved the book, his so-called Irish farm story from the author who had promised himself that he’d never write an Irish farm story; complex, dark, atmospheric, with hints Manly Hopkins. After Black Snow I couldn’t wait to read his next books, Grace – which the Washington Post described as, “a moving work of lyrical and at times hallucinatory beauty” – and Beyond the Sea, his story of two fisherman washed out to sea which, on recent reading, felt like the perfect book for our pandemic times with its theme of forced isolation and its aftermath. Paul will be at the bookshop on Friday, 20th May to talk about his writing. Doors open at 7pm. This is an event not to be missed, and not just for the free booze. Paul’s a talented and thoughtful writer and a great speaker. Message us if you plan to come!