Half Term Joy and Banter

Bet y'all can't wait for Half Term! :)
Well, if the weather stays as it is, don't be worried about finding things to do. We've got loads of stuff in here to keep the kids entertained: stickerbooks, tales of adventure, Lego, puzzles, games, art supplies, and if the sun comes out again, we also have guide books to explore wildlife and the Great Outdoors, or to get cracking in the garden.

And to top it all off, as it's the 15th anniversary of the Gruffalo, we'll have a

GRUFFALO TEA PARTY!

There'll be pretty Gruffalo decorations, story time, cakes and biscuits, mask making and Gruffalo Hide-and-Seek.

It all kicks off on 30th May at 2pm, headed by our lovely Children's Bookseller Nina.

So hopefully we'll see you there!

Witney author in book prize finals!

Some of you may remember last June, when we launched wonderful local author Thomas Brown's magnificent gothic horror debut "Lynnwood".

For those of you who don't, there is a great little video created by Southampton University student Joseph Madden, which sums up the event brilliantly.

It was an incredible day celebrating an incredible book and the storytelling skill and passionate work that has gone into it. For those of you unfamiliar with that beauty, pop into the shop and speak to me or see the reviews on our website.


Well, we have been tweeting about it for a bit now, but a little while ago, "Lynnwood" was nominated for the People's Book Prize, a prize not given by a distant panel of people, but by readers, through a democratic process of voting.

And the great news is that "Lynnwood" is now one of the finalists!

We're extremely proud to support Mr Brown and his work - it truly is a book we love and believe in!

And in other good news, Witneyite and born Oxford man, Mr Brown has also become the poster boy for the Southampton University English and Creative Writing degrees.

A great thumbs up from us, and a massive recommendation to all our customers.

Lots of booky love,

Patty 

The Shop (Blog) is Open

Dear all,

glad you found your way to us!

We've finally decided to start a blog, because - let's face it, if you've been to our shop, you know we never shut up - 140 characters on Twitter just don't cut it. The other day I tried to talk about "The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared" by Jonas Jonasson, a book I know many of you have enjoyed, but do you think I could fit that title in a tweet in a relevant context? It ended up being "The 100-Y-O Man WCOOTWAD", and the only response I probably elicited was either "Is she drunk?" (not on the job, sigh!) or "Is the cat on the keyboard?" (Oh I want a shop cat, and a shop parrot, wouldn't that be ace? But parrots and books have an uncomfortable stencil-esque relationship, and I can't get the cat back out from behind the shelves, so no...). Anyways, to make a long story short, we decided to start a blog for a variety of reasons.

We can tell you about books. Books we love, books we might not love that much (it happens) but still think you might love.

We can let you know about events.

We can talk about books and reading and all kinds of fun stuff.

We might even post some silly stuff once in a while. (Again, if you've been in to chat with us, you know solemn sanity is not at the top of our list of priorities.)

We can let you know about new stuff coming out.

You can even post us reviews of your favourite books and we'll post them on here (Kids, adults, youse all invited!)

You can even ask us stuff or make suggestions, and we'll feed back to you and do stuffthings about it. Remember, this is your community bookshop.

THIS. IS. WITNEY! (I know, lame!)

So yeah, all that.

We'll still have our twitter account, though (@WstonesWitney). Because Hash Tags are fun.
I'll try and get everyone to post on here, and we'll try and post as often as possible, when we're not shelving or dusting or telling you about awesome books in person.

Come see us in town.
And if not, come see us on here.

We'd love to have you!

Toodle pip,


Patty :)