Books v. Cigarettes
Sibiu railway station waiting room: a vending machine of books, wholesome literary fare at bargain price. It includes Schopenhauer, Theodore Dreiser’s overlong An American Tragedy (here in 3 vols, it’s … Continue reading
Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Enchanted April
The Albion Beatnik Press in January next year will publish twenty-four books of American and British writing. Each will have been published before the Second World War, some before the … Continue reading
Sally Bayley’s Girl With Dove
“Outside of books, nothing much happens. Most of life is boring, which is why you have to make some of it up.” I have read recently Girl With Dove: A … Continue reading
Bookshops I Have Known
In 1982 I was running books from a nearby market town, Aylesbury, to the provincial, academic avatar that is Oxford, to sell them on for what I regarded to be … Continue reading
Beatnik Curiosities, or Customers Happen
Some of the more noteworthy happenings in the Bookstore of late. Russian guests meet after hours in the Beatnik the night before Prof of Poetry Simon Armitage’s lecture at University Schools to … Continue reading
Chic Cadence & Latticed Lampshades
– I do things like get in a taxi and say, “The library, and step on it.” – To read a sentence of David Foster Wallace, the most fulfilling writer … Continue reading
Sucking Mintoes in the Bath with Agatha Christie
“Poetry is not the most important thing in life… I’d much rather lie in a hot bath reading Agatha Christie and sucking sweets.” – Dylan Thomas The Orient Express stops … Continue reading
It’s the Church Pew that Moves, Not the Earth
You gotta be bonkers not to love Barbara Pym’s novels. Her acme was a 1950s suburban or neo-rural setting where The Archers doesn’t quite meet James Bond, coz you don’t get … Continue reading
Dornford Yates: Snobbery with Violence
It is wonderful to judge a book by its cover, to date a book by its cover also. Here is a recent second-hand addition here: Blind Corner by Dornford Yates, … Continue reading
Filming Bernard O’Donoghue Read ‘Connolly’s Bookshop’
Bernard O’Donoghue’s poetry collection The Seasons of Cullen Church (Faber, 2016) is lyrical and observant, an elegiac lament, beautiful so often, riddled with memories of a childhood spent near Cork. … Continue reading
The Moving Toyshop & the Awkward Hour Between Evensong & Cocktails
EDMUND CRISPIN’s The Moving Toyshop is one of the classic Oxford novels. Crispin was the pseudonym of Robert Bruce Montgomery, a composer of vocal and choral music which included An Oxford … Continue reading
Kerouac & the Sputnik
Whilst living a fairly dissolute life – a university drop out, a naval honourable discharge, arrested as an accessory to murder – Jack Kerouac wrote constantly throughout the turmoil in … Continue reading
Opening Lines
I recently posted online my two favourite opening lines from novels: Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess: “It was the afternoon of my eighty-fifth birthday, and I was in bed with my … Continue reading
Let’s Talk of Graves, of Worms, & Epitaphs; Make Dust our Paper…
So here’s a nice little copy sold yesterday of George Herbert’s The Temple & A Priest to the Temple, Everyman edition, the binding slightly shaky but from a time when … Continue reading
Stig of the Dump, Ardizzone, Go-karts & Girlies
So I met someone last night who is known as Stig (he’s got an otherwise posh name). He’s nicknamed after Clive King’s hero, Stig of the Dump, the now classic … Continue reading
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Onanism Fleshed Out: Dan Holloway’s Evie & Guy
I so often go on and about Dan Holloway’s onanistic novel Evie and Guy, and am pleased to have heard that Dan is preparing a second edition. It is a … Continue reading
Matchbox Stories from Book Ex Machina
In stock is the tiniest literary magazine in the world: Matchbox Stories from Book Ex Machina, an original publishing initiative from a writer and photographer in Cyprus. Each issue is a … Continue reading
Judge a Book by its Cover
The earliest surviving dust jacket dates from 1833: a plain buff-coloured paper with the title overprinted in red. In the twentieth century the potential for the dust jacket as a … Continue reading
The Shop Corner of Shame
The latest book in the shop Corner of Shame – that is the resting place for books rejected by customers because considered too expensive – is The Death and Letters … Continue reading
Malcolm Saville’s Yard Broom
Malcolm Saville was born in Hastings in 1901 and educated there. His first job was as a clerk with the Oxford University Press, and the rest of his working life … Continue reading
Three Doorbells in Search of a Door
It took an act of generosity from a Portuguese friend to deliver the rooster, an ornament as fine as a Botticelli angel. But it took my brilliance with a drill to … Continue reading
Ten Books to Make You See a Big Picture
This selection is made from the Albion Beatnik Press’ book Fifty Shades of Re(a)d (an attempt to curate a vital book collection). These books attempt to take us outside of … Continue reading
The Bodleian Library
The Bodleian Library was refurnished by 1613, and the Old Schools Quadrangle extension was already under serious planning – to be measured in cubits rather than feet and inches, based on … Continue reading
Four Books to Visit a Shrink with
The book cover designs by Oxford based artist Stella Shakerchi for four of the titles from the forthcoming Oxfordshire Art Weeks exhibition (from 7th May), 50 Shades of Re(a)d, with … Continue reading
Fifty Shades of Re(a)d
It was Oxford based artist Stella Shakerchi who came up with the idea of hanging a collection of book cover design in the Albion Beatnik Bookstore windows, and the shop … Continue reading
This Is A Bookshop
The poster found often in the shop window did for a few golden days go viral and rampant on the internet. Its tale is told here by Dan Holloway in … Continue reading
The New Yorker
HISTORY The creation of The New Yorker is a true case of necessity being the mother of invention. In the early 1920s, a New York couple – Harold Ross and … Continue reading
Recommended Graphic Novels
Persepolis [2003] MARJANE SATRAPI This is the story of a young girl growing up in Iran. Illustrated by Satrapi’s deceptively simple and yet wonderfully expressive drawings, it is a fascinating coming … Continue reading
Recommended Historical Novels for Children
Historical fiction is a fabulous genre. It allows us all to empathise with someone from a different time with whom we would otherwise have no connection. It can illustrate historical points … Continue reading
Great Children’s Novels with Great Sequels
Books with sequels are ideal recommendations for children: if they are enjoyed, the quieter they are for longer. Here is a random selection:- The Borrowers by Mary Norton Mary Norton (1903-1992) … Continue reading
A Straight Line to Joy: a Choice of Jazz Books
There are only a few writers who are able to write well and with authority on all aspects of jazz. Philip Larkin pleaded for a “belle-lettriste of jazz, a Newman … Continue reading
Is There Anything to Read after Harry Potter?
It was often alleged that the craze for Harry Potter books throughout the 1990s fuelled an awakening in the art of reading. I was doubtful at the time, even more … Continue reading
Novels Set in Oxford
This is a non-alphabetical list of novels set in Oxford, not necessarily recommended as some are a little bit toffee-nosed and derelict, but all are well regarded and all are … Continue reading
A Love Affair with Libraries
Quite a few times on the internet recently I have stumbled across a collection of startling photographs taken of old Cincinnati Public Library, bulldozed in 1955: greyscale, razor sharp images of silhouetted and … Continue reading
The Discordant Who? Atzmon & Debate
I read the other day that Gilad Atzmon’s book The Wandering Who? has been taken off the virtual shelves of the Guardian book web site. My first reaction was to be … Continue reading
London Novelists 1930-1960
PATRICK HAMILTON’s father was a barrister, but an inheritance altered his perspective – drink, travel and mistresses then took precedence, his wife and three children ignored. When Patrick was twelve, … Continue reading
The Scottish Renaissance: Salt in Your Porridge, a Sporin & Scottish Accents
The early part of the twentieth century witnessed a growing cultural self-awareness in many places. The Harlem Renaissance explored black culture and radiated around urban America from its base in … Continue reading
Lists Galore: 1/ Favourite American Novels of the Early Twentieth Century
To make the autodidact completely at home in the Albion Beatnik, here’s a pointless list of twentieth century American novels we think you should have read. Sometimes they are even on … Continue reading
Anna Kavan: Addicted & Addictive
ANNA KAVAN was born Helen Emily Woods in 1901 in Cannes, France, and was raised and educated in Europe and California. Her wealthy English parents were cold and displayed scant … Continue reading
Anais Nin & Henry Miller: Compendium of American Sexual Neuroses
ANAIS NIN was born in France, although when she was eleven her father, a Catalan composer, deserted the family and her Danish mother took the three children to America – it … Continue reading
The Beat Generation
As with many movements, the BEAT GENERATION began with a few like-minded friends, in this case writers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Gregory Corso. Although they were sometimes … Continue reading