The Albion Beatnik Bookstore website (or how to change a light bulb in a tight space on a ladder)

The web page of the Albion Beatnik Bookstore, based once in Oxford, then Sibiu, always neo-bankrupt, now closed for business: atavistic and very analogue, its musings and misspells on books and stuff.

Monthly Archives: December, 2016

Table Talk: Arthur, Brexit & Presidential Hacking

Arthur, occasional shop dog, spent another week curating the shop floor, guarding it with the speed of a soft-shelled tortoise in need of a shave on speed. He settled in … Continue reading

23rd December 2016 · Leave a comment

Ulysses, a Hundred Visions & Revisions, Before the Taking of a Toast & Tea

I never thought I could announce that because of the Christmas rush… well the Beatnik has sold out of James Joyce’s Ulysses. The modernist vade mecum, a stream-of-consciousness experimental prose, full … Continue reading

21st December 2016 · 1 Comment

Tea & Scone with Barbara Pym

If you buy a BARBARA PYM book from the shop before Christmas, you’ll get a free pot of tea with scone, butter, jam and cream. That’s better than any discounted … Continue reading

13th December 2016 · 1 Comment

Bobby Fischer’s My 60 Memorable Games

The great chess players of the past are fascinating characters. Even if long dead and with an afterlife only of algebraic notation, they can impose themselves upon our imagination still. … Continue reading

12th December 2016 · 1 Comment

Julian MacLaren-Ross: Squandered Daylight, Neon-moonlight

JULIAN MacLAREN-ROSS (1912-1964) delineated with brilliance and acuity the sleazy bohemian atmosphere of post-war Soho through a series of amusing short stories and eight novels. His writing style is lively, … Continue reading

9th December 2016 · Leave a comment

Things that Annoy Booksellers, part 1

Odd that as the Kindle and the computer are so efficient – I am told we no longer need books or paper – that any bog standard academic these days … Continue reading

7th December 2016 · Leave a comment

Gerald Kersh Died with His Boots Unclean

One of the great chroniclers of London’s metropolitan life was the versatile GERALD KERSH (1911-1968), although he came to settle in Barbados (where his house burnt down), then Canada, and in … Continue reading

6th December 2016 · Leave a comment

Hans Fallada & Despair at Brookfield Farm

HANS FALLADA was published by Melville House only in 2009, Penguin thereafter (translated by Michael Hofmann), so he is a recent invention in the English-speaking world, and a surprising commercial … Continue reading

4th December 2016 · Leave a comment

Colin MacInnes & London’s Jazz Age

Colin MacInnes, who died in 1976, is a fascinating novelist. He identified both the rise of the rebel teenage generation and an emergent multicultural London. He was openly gay at … Continue reading

1st December 2016 · Leave a comment

Bernard O’Donoghue’s Connolly’s Bookshop

Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women