Books Books Books

Transatlantic duo The Lizard Point will be playing a set at the bookshop on 4th April. This performance is the last show of a European/San Francisco tour to promote their third LP, In The Red Earth. Performance is scheduled to begin at 16.00, entry is free and there’s no sign-up. Named after the opening track of Brian Eno’s Ambient 4: On Land, The Lizard Point are bookshop regular Conor Devlin (Half Film, [the] caseworker) and Geoffrey Scott (Slowness).

To coincide with World Autism Awareness Day, Marie-Laure Del Vecchio and Naomi Cahen are running an event called Reading Autism, picking out a selection of books they particularly value on the topic.  The event is for autistic people, or those who wonder whether they might be autistic, their loved ones, professionals, and anyone curious to learn more about autism. It aims to create a welcoming space to explore the subject. Doors open 18.30. Event 19.00 – 20.00 Sign up here Marie-Laure is a psychotherapist, speaker, and author specializing in neurodiversity. Naomi Cahen is a Swiss/British designer and author. Autistic herself, she enjoys speaking about books, autism, and neurodiversity.

The rules are simple: bring in your pre-loved English books (as many as you want) and leave with as many second-hand books as you brought in. Bring the books you loved to bits, not the ones that are falling to bits. Starting at noon, ending at 4pm, we will provide simple snacks and beverages.

We’re doing it again, on Saturday, January 31st, from noon until 4pm! Please bring a gently loved book to swap for a new-to-you book! (no textbooks, manuals, or encylopedias, please.) Enjoy talking books with other booklovers? This is the event for you! See you there!

We’ve reached a critical mass on the Pre-Loved shelves and are selling all of our second-hand books for two for CHF 5 from Saturday, 10th January until the end of the month, or until we run out of books whichever is the soonest. 

We are opening until 8pm during the Nocturnes – 17, 18, 19, 20, 22 and 23 December. We are closed from 1pm, 24th December until 9am, 3rd January. We wish you all a superlative Christmas. Nous sommes ouverts jusqu’à 20h pendant les Nocturnes, les 17, 18, 19, 20, 22 et 23 décembre. Nous sommes fermés du 24 décembre à 13h au 3 janvier à 9h. Nous vous souhaitons à tous un très joyeux Noël.

On Saturday, 29th November, come do your Christmas shopping at the bookshop and from12-4pm, benefit from our skilled team of gift-wrappers to turn your purchase into the perfect gift, ready to go under the tree! Donations are gladly accepted to our partner charity, Driftwood. Driftwood is an Anglo-Swiss charity, funding small, high-impact projects in Nepal. The collaboration with the bookshop will help fund school books for the girls at Pal Ewam Namgyal Monastic Nunnery School, and braille/story books for Nepal’s Disabled School Association.

Come to the bookshop on Saturday 13th December from 12-4pm to enjoy a fresh pastry, hand-baked by our skilled bookshop team! We are promising mince pies, but also some Swiss variations for those who find mince pies a bit much. All proceeds from the Bake Sale go directly to Driftwood, an Anglo-Swiss charity funding small, high-impact projects in Nepal. The collaboration with the bookshop will help fund school books for the girls at Pal Ewam Namgyal Monastic Nunnery School, and braille/story books for Nepal’s Disabled School Association.

From noon until 4pm on Saturday, October 25th, prepare yourself for the longest night of the year (yes, the 25th is the change of time) by bringing in your well loved and read books and going home with other pre-loved books. Bring one (or more!) gently used books and exchange it with any book from our pre-loved selection, or one that a fellow customer has brought in! This October, our book swap is also a small celebration for our 17 years in service, and snacks will be provided!

We are excited to have Romana Iorga in the bookshop on Thursday, June 19th, reading from her new book of poetry, Temporary Skin. If you’ve read or heard any of her poems before, you’ll know that she is a wizard with words, and I can’t wait to hear her read from this new collection! In Romana Iorga’s Temporary Skin, the wound pulses, the grave beckons, the weather changes. The past is ever near, and the past is irretrievable. Folkloric, witty, and understated by turns, these poems shimmer with inventive metaphors, reversals, and self-skepticism, all of which remind us of the fundamental strangeness of existence, a strangeness we lose touch with amid the blur of the mundane. But more than that, Temporary Skin builds into a delightful exploration of the act of making itself and a meditation on language as method for restoring the fragments of our selves and our lives. “I am waiting to be returned to myself / in one piece,” Iorga writes—something we all long for, and something this collection gives us, poemby poem by poem. —Molly Spencer, Author of If the House, Hinge, and Invitatory Doors will open at 18h30 for the event, with the reading to start at 19h, with light refreshments provided. Please sign up here.