Posts
Wow! things have been busy in the life of this bookshop boss! Diary and Calender season hit with a rush in early october and is steam rollering ahead! All the holiday makers brought their books back en mass and for a while it looked like we were trying to put in new walls in the shop made solely out of secondhand books! either that or the minions and customer base were just trying to box me in to keep me out the way! luckily we have now got a grip on this and shelved most of it, but now is the time for a bargain as a lot of the books we had in are now being sold on quick through no return at only 99p each or 10 for £5.00 and this includes some top authors like Dan Brown and Martina Cole!
We are now also carrying lots more religious books and have just been granted our remit to sell 'religious items' as well, so we have now have nativity sets, advent calenders, candles and Church Lectionaries in stock and as from next week we will have Communion Wafers in! how cool is that - well ok so I think its cool, however we now need more room!!!
Science Fiction and Paranormals keeps growing and we are carrying some manga and graphic Books now! and it goes on, and what with more religious, more thrillers, more saga's and lots more gen we are packed to the gills!
So be warned my loyal and somewhat lovely customers and my serving minions of staff - new bookcases have been ordered and much shifting of shelves will be occuring in the next few weeks! now as I am way too tight to close for a few days, and anyway what would all you readers do if we did that! this moving will occur whilst you are wandering around - now as it means dis-assembling some units and assembling others this will perhaps be a bit gory for the feint hearted and those with OCD! however we will endeavour ( well ok i will try a little!) to keep the mess and inconvenience down as much as possible, but there will be times when the section you want may well be in a box as its shelves are altered and rebuilt, but as long as you are officianado's of the jumble sale and rummage mentality then you should still be able to get by and grab that bargain of a book that you know is waiting for you!
So there we go, plans revealed, and already I feel tired just thinking about it let alone doing it!
By the way can I recommend John Ringo to you, his tech net fantasy is just really really good, starting with ' Here Be Dragons' which is available at a stunning bargain price of only £3.99 for a limited time instead of £6.99, it then continues on with 'Emerald Sea" which has mermaids and dragons, but also a stunning set of battle scenes that are a joy to read. So there we go, Bookshop Boss seriously recommends you nip in and get some John Ringo books to see you through the trials of the bookcase shuffle for the next few weeks.
Right, tired now, need caffeine or sleep and as there is more I want to do that would be caffeine! the staple of my diet! Going now see you in the shop tomorrow!
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Ooh Christian Books, Magazines & More
Ohh, There was another 40 Books added to the Christian section today, including the christian top 20 sellers. That was more work than you might think, some of those resources just would not fit the shelves and the hardbacks wouldnt stand and there was more! but I have to say at least the bay looks good and I had people looking and saying they would be back. We can hope.
There was also a delivery of magazines, back issues of Trail, Country Walking, Hike, Camping, The Spectator & Business News magazine. SO I had to completely rejig the front to get them out on display, now lets hope they sell. Puzzle mag delivery today - can you explain to me how come I can have a fresh delievery in and yet be assured by some that either A) there are no... insert puzzle titles of choice! or B)they ahve had all the magazines on display!
Ohh I tell you it makes my head hurt!
Yesterday in the down pour it rained in the bookshop, emergency plans sped into action and pieces of wood and shelf backing sprang into action as worthy protective forces for the most problematic drops and soon we were dry again - of course this was probably helped by the fact that the rain stopped quickly being just a summer squall.
There is a 3 for £5 promotion on books at the minute. I have been around with my little yellow highlighter colouring in labels, and any yellow labels now deonte they are part of the promotion and instead of 2 for £5 you now get 3 for £5 if the books have a yellow sticker! how cool is that for a summer promotion. Anyway if you are reading this then hurry in as once the books are gone they are gone and there are some pretty good authors in the promo!
So ok thats it the end of the blog for today as the bookshopboss is tired and gets to do it all again tomorrow - who knows maybe my american delivery from Ingrams will appear to cheer me up a little! its just like christmas everytime the american box arrives!
There was also a delivery of magazines, back issues of Trail, Country Walking, Hike, Camping, The Spectator & Business News magazine. SO I had to completely rejig the front to get them out on display, now lets hope they sell. Puzzle mag delivery today - can you explain to me how come I can have a fresh delievery in and yet be assured by some that either A) there are no... insert puzzle titles of choice! or B)they ahve had all the magazines on display!
Ohh I tell you it makes my head hurt!
Yesterday in the down pour it rained in the bookshop, emergency plans sped into action and pieces of wood and shelf backing sprang into action as worthy protective forces for the most problematic drops and soon we were dry again - of course this was probably helped by the fact that the rain stopped quickly being just a summer squall.
There is a 3 for £5 promotion on books at the minute. I have been around with my little yellow highlighter colouring in labels, and any yellow labels now deonte they are part of the promotion and instead of 2 for £5 you now get 3 for £5 if the books have a yellow sticker! how cool is that for a summer promotion. Anyway if you are reading this then hurry in as once the books are gone they are gone and there are some pretty good authors in the promo!
So ok thats it the end of the blog for today as the bookshopboss is tired and gets to do it all again tomorrow - who knows maybe my american delivery from Ingrams will appear to cheer me up a little! its just like christmas everytime the american box arrives!
Friday, July 06, 2007
Great News - Christian Books
Great News - Unicorn Tree Books is now stocking Christian Books!
With the sad demise of Advance Books in Lincoln,(So OK not good news for Tim & Advance!) we have started to sell Christian Books, thus we are trying to honour the spirit of Advance Books by returning Christian Books to the Market in which Advance Books started out over 50 years ago.
Before taking on Unicorn Tree Books, me - unicorntreebooksboss spent 10 years working for a large Christian Book Chain - SPCK Bookshops - and was manager of 3 of their stores in that time, London, Brighton & Lincoln, I was also their e-commerce website manager for 5 years.
Now lets clear this up, no I did not suddenly become agnostic, nor was I thrown out for singing Kumbayah off key, nor did my heart for Christian Books dissipate! I do and have in fact continued to be the Religious and Philosophy Previewer for Publishing News, and I'm also be on the Review Board of www.thegoodbookstall.org.uk as their Marketing thingy and pest! however I did feel the need to move on and into the market and the general book trade.
However when Tim of Advance informed told me he was closing down, and just at the same time as I had just rejigged Unicorn Tree and found a space for more books, (I am sure Unicorn Tree is in fact a re-incarnation of a time lords Tardis - something definitely happens to the time continuum, amazing how long a day can be under the glass house when the sun is shining!- as I just keep moving things around and discovering space that was wasting away and dying for books, airfix models, music, jigsaws, crafts etc to fill it!!) so anyway I felt sure this was the reason and answer as to what to fill that space with, and so it is that we are now carrying a range of Christian Books.
As with all our books we have signed up with the major wholesalers both in the UK & US, and also contacted remainder dealers to ensure a range of excellent product at great prices (most books are at slightly less than the RRP wherever possible!) and as ever we offer ordering services for anything we don't have in stock and for Hard to Find items.
So please support us as we bring Christian Books into the heart of the marketplace!
With the sad demise of Advance Books in Lincoln,(So OK not good news for Tim & Advance!) we have started to sell Christian Books, thus we are trying to honour the spirit of Advance Books by returning Christian Books to the Market in which Advance Books started out over 50 years ago.
Before taking on Unicorn Tree Books, me - unicorntreebooksboss spent 10 years working for a large Christian Book Chain - SPCK Bookshops - and was manager of 3 of their stores in that time, London, Brighton & Lincoln, I was also their e-commerce website manager for 5 years.
Now lets clear this up, no I did not suddenly become agnostic, nor was I thrown out for singing Kumbayah off key, nor did my heart for Christian Books dissipate! I do and have in fact continued to be the Religious and Philosophy Previewer for Publishing News, and I'm also be on the Review Board of www.thegoodbookstall.org.uk as their Marketing thingy and pest! however I did feel the need to move on and into the market and the general book trade.
However when Tim of Advance informed told me he was closing down, and just at the same time as I had just rejigged Unicorn Tree and found a space for more books, (I am sure Unicorn Tree is in fact a re-incarnation of a time lords Tardis - something definitely happens to the time continuum, amazing how long a day can be under the glass house when the sun is shining!- as I just keep moving things around and discovering space that was wasting away and dying for books, airfix models, music, jigsaws, crafts etc to fill it!!) so anyway I felt sure this was the reason and answer as to what to fill that space with, and so it is that we are now carrying a range of Christian Books.
As with all our books we have signed up with the major wholesalers both in the UK & US, and also contacted remainder dealers to ensure a range of excellent product at great prices (most books are at slightly less than the RRP wherever possible!) and as ever we offer ordering services for anything we don't have in stock and for Hard to Find items.
So please support us as we bring Christian Books into the heart of the marketplace!
Tanya Huff - Smoke & Ashes
Ohh read the New Smoke book from Ms Huff, and it is excellent!
Published by Daw books on the 5th June, 0756404150 and selling at £6.99, Smoke and Ashes is fantastic. Tony has really come into his own in this one, oh and hey at the end of the book he finally gets his man!
This time we have a human demongate and a sex demon trying to get through! that being said the one thing you don't find in Tanya Huff books is gratuitous and pornographic sex scenes, in fact they are generally alluded to and pretty much left to your own interactive imagination - in many ways much more satisfying and less disruptive to a great story!
Like I said it is a fantastic read.
The newest fantastic read I am reading (whilst waiting for customers between the horrendous torrential downpours, thunder and lightening and other delights the great British weather is throwing at us this July you understand - after all there is only so much dusting I can do and after all you don't buy a bookshop because you don't want to read the stock!!) is Kelley Armstrong's book, Bitten, 9781841493503, £6.99 by Orbit Books. A great Werewolf book, with strong and believable characters and a really strong storyline that goes on. Small writing and lots of pages, something to really get your paws on and sink your teeth into late into the moonlight nights!
The female protagonist in this is not in any way shape or form wishy washy, nor is she unbelievable. She is in fact a very believable character and forms a great backdrop to the story. The action is reasonably fast paced but with a great degree of finesse for something about werewolves. Excellent read - now if only I could just sit and finish it rather than dust the shelves and serve you customers, and no I am not selling it to any of you and I don't care how sad you look, but a new copy from me and stop trying to crib my copy as a cheap secondhand one!! Its worth the cost new!
Published by Daw books on the 5th June, 0756404150 and selling at £6.99, Smoke and Ashes is fantastic. Tony has really come into his own in this one, oh and hey at the end of the book he finally gets his man!
This time we have a human demongate and a sex demon trying to get through! that being said the one thing you don't find in Tanya Huff books is gratuitous and pornographic sex scenes, in fact they are generally alluded to and pretty much left to your own interactive imagination - in many ways much more satisfying and less disruptive to a great story!
Like I said it is a fantastic read.
The newest fantastic read I am reading (whilst waiting for customers between the horrendous torrential downpours, thunder and lightening and other delights the great British weather is throwing at us this July you understand - after all there is only so much dusting I can do and after all you don't buy a bookshop because you don't want to read the stock!!) is Kelley Armstrong's book, Bitten, 9781841493503, £6.99 by Orbit Books. A great Werewolf book, with strong and believable characters and a really strong storyline that goes on. Small writing and lots of pages, something to really get your paws on and sink your teeth into late into the moonlight nights!
The female protagonist in this is not in any way shape or form wishy washy, nor is she unbelievable. She is in fact a very believable character and forms a great backdrop to the story. The action is reasonably fast paced but with a great degree of finesse for something about werewolves. Excellent read - now if only I could just sit and finish it rather than dust the shelves and serve you customers, and no I am not selling it to any of you and I don't care how sad you look, but a new copy from me and stop trying to crib my copy as a cheap secondhand one!! Its worth the cost new!
Saturday, March 10, 2007
OOH how time flies & we have an officially nominated charity to support!
Ohh, who knew bookselling could be such hard work, and so grubby, boks just are filthy filthy things - and no thats not a referecne to those black lace books up on the top shelf at the back of the shop, or those paranormal sex crazed vampire novels such as Laurel K. Hamilton and Sherilyn Kenyon & Christine Feehan write, or even the Blaze range of Mills & Boon books, though it could be an apt description - how rude!! no I mean that books are dust gatherers, I reckon even if the building ws hemetically sealed books would still get grubby!
White shirts are out, cream trousers! never, black is the cool and sensible colour of the bookshop manager!
Anyway enough of that, I have in the last three months been busy rejigging the shop so all the books fit and are in some semblence of order! We are almost there with cataloguing and zapping them into the computer system too! it will be great when its done, well one hopes it will.
Last year we gave £87.00 to various charities through the pennies that people are generous to leave behind, so see that addage about looking after the pennies is apt! as after all when I say the pennies left behind I do mean exactly that, that £87.00 was from 1p pieces left over from lots of £6.99 books etc. Actaully we gave more than that but thats the amount that came solely from Customers pennies.
So this year we are doing the same sort of thing but adding a bit more kick and emphasis where we can!
We have read a book (well more than one! but only the one on this subject!) about being socially and ethically good, so we are attempting to redunce our carbon footprint in the shop - turning off equipment we dont use often and just popping it on when we need it! and we are recycling our cardboard and paper and plastics, we also have a recycling4charity collection box for inkjet cartridges and mobile phones and £1.00 for each cartridge and up to £20 for each phone will go to Habitat for Humanity (GB) to help provide low cost and essential housing both in the UK and abroad! so if you are visiting then drop off your old cartridges!
And we are also supporting a great charity called ClearVision - they take ordinary books and using a clear acetate sheet they braille it and then pop it back into the rebound books, this means that these books can be used by both Blind and Sighted readers! so Children can read to parents and parents to children, young people can read to each other or share their books regardless of whether they can see or not! is that not the best idea!! It costs about £7.00 to turn an ordinary childs book into a braille/sighted book that can be used over and over, so we would like it if you would help us support this great endeavour - to that aim we have set up a justgiving charity fund raising page and would love it if you could find it in you to visit and donate! by the way if you are near the shop you can come in and see one of these great books! its really impressive. So come by and visit and find it to help this great charity if you possibly can by going here:
Anyway so thats what we are doing for this year so far, well that and cleaing books and book shelves over and over again!
oh yes and remember to come visit our nearly proper website at www.lincolncentralmarket.co.uk if you have the time.
anyway enough from me - have to go runa bookshop by myself again tomorrow and its already very late! ta ta for now!
White shirts are out, cream trousers! never, black is the cool and sensible colour of the bookshop manager!
Anyway enough of that, I have in the last three months been busy rejigging the shop so all the books fit and are in some semblence of order! We are almost there with cataloguing and zapping them into the computer system too! it will be great when its done, well one hopes it will.
Last year we gave £87.00 to various charities through the pennies that people are generous to leave behind, so see that addage about looking after the pennies is apt! as after all when I say the pennies left behind I do mean exactly that, that £87.00 was from 1p pieces left over from lots of £6.99 books etc. Actaully we gave more than that but thats the amount that came solely from Customers pennies.
So this year we are doing the same sort of thing but adding a bit more kick and emphasis where we can!
We have read a book (well more than one! but only the one on this subject!) about being socially and ethically good, so we are attempting to redunce our carbon footprint in the shop - turning off equipment we dont use often and just popping it on when we need it! and we are recycling our cardboard and paper and plastics, we also have a recycling4charity collection box for inkjet cartridges and mobile phones and £1.00 for each cartridge and up to £20 for each phone will go to Habitat for Humanity (GB) to help provide low cost and essential housing both in the UK and abroad! so if you are visiting then drop off your old cartridges!
And we are also supporting a great charity called ClearVision - they take ordinary books and using a clear acetate sheet they braille it and then pop it back into the rebound books, this means that these books can be used by both Blind and Sighted readers! so Children can read to parents and parents to children, young people can read to each other or share their books regardless of whether they can see or not! is that not the best idea!! It costs about £7.00 to turn an ordinary childs book into a braille/sighted book that can be used over and over, so we would like it if you would help us support this great endeavour - to that aim we have set up a justgiving charity fund raising page and would love it if you could find it in you to visit and donate! by the way if you are near the shop you can come in and see one of these great books! its really impressive. So come by and visit and find it to help this great charity if you possibly can by going here:
Anyway so thats what we are doing for this year so far, well that and cleaing books and book shelves over and over again!
oh yes and remember to come visit our nearly proper website at www.lincolncentralmarket.co.uk if you have the time.
anyway enough from me - have to go runa bookshop by myself again tomorrow and its already very late! ta ta for now!
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
How Fast do books get from America to here?
Sent off the Ingram Order today - that's our American Import main supplier, now last week we sent an order off on Saturday night and it was in on Wednesday morning - now to say we were a little suprised by the speed was putting it mildly! We were not only surprised we were overjoyed as were all the Louis L'Amour fans whose Western Cowboy and Sackett books were in the box, and the assistant unicorn boss was also a little happy as all the Nora Roberts new books were also in the box, so anyway enough of last week, back to this week.
Well anyway sent the order today and we are waiting to see how fast this one will come in.
Now given the speed of last week we reckon sods law dictates that it will be three weeks next Thursday before we see these books, which will of course make for a different set of unhappy Louis L'amour and J.T.Edson fans, as that's what's mostly in this box again, who new there were so many cowboy fans out there! Having said that the Kenny Rogers, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson CD's seem to have been selling well just recently as well. Must be a country thing!
Hmm the jigsaws that came in the other day seem to be sailing out this week, lots of people buying 1000 piece and double 500 piece jigsaws! I admire these people along with the ones buying all the new Suduko puzzle books we just had in as I don't have the patience to do complicated puzzles, much more a word search puzzle person or even just give me a book and I am happy!
Talking of books I still owe you all a review on Jim Butcher and his book Storm Front, it really was good and a review will follow soon I promise, but I started reading Tanya Huff's Newest book - Smoke and Mirrors, which follows on from Smoke and Shadows that I reviewed the other week and now can't put it down! Reviews to follow, promise!
Well anyway sent the order today and we are waiting to see how fast this one will come in.
Now given the speed of last week we reckon sods law dictates that it will be three weeks next Thursday before we see these books, which will of course make for a different set of unhappy Louis L'amour and J.T.Edson fans, as that's what's mostly in this box again, who new there were so many cowboy fans out there! Having said that the Kenny Rogers, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson CD's seem to have been selling well just recently as well. Must be a country thing!
Hmm the jigsaws that came in the other day seem to be sailing out this week, lots of people buying 1000 piece and double 500 piece jigsaws! I admire these people along with the ones buying all the new Suduko puzzle books we just had in as I don't have the patience to do complicated puzzles, much more a word search puzzle person or even just give me a book and I am happy!
Talking of books I still owe you all a review on Jim Butcher and his book Storm Front, it really was good and a review will follow soon I promise, but I started reading Tanya Huff's Newest book - Smoke and Mirrors, which follows on from Smoke and Shadows that I reviewed the other week and now can't put it down! Reviews to follow, promise!
Friday, October 06, 2006
Jigsaws!
Jigsaws came in today - lots of Thomas Kinkade jigsaws and also some really nice steam train jigsaws and some mythic ones -ohh very nice - shame that I dont actaully have the patience to do them myself.
A christmas Beano special jigsaw also came in and sold within 27 minutes, not a bad turn around that!
So now we are all ready for the dark winter nights and the christmas rush and have our jigsaws all firmly in place and ready to sell, so come by and see them and the cool elvis palying cards and bead sets that also came in.
A christmas Beano special jigsaw also came in and sold within 27 minutes, not a bad turn around that!
So now we are all ready for the dark winter nights and the christmas rush and have our jigsaws all firmly in place and ready to sell, so come by and see them and the cool elvis palying cards and bead sets that also came in.
Where did a week go?
Can someone please tell me where on earth the last week or so went! I mean one day it was last tuesday and now its this friday!
So ok I can account for a manic, and I do mean manic, Saturday - me, unicorntreeboss, running the shop all by myself, do you know what that actaully meant?? that meant work! yes real work, me, interaction with cheerful customers and no time to sit and read and a not a minion in sight to boss! And how many jigsaws! I almost thought I was a jigsaw shop at one point and not a bookshop, you can tell the dark nights are acoming! - so okay a manic saturday I do indeed recall.
Then an exhausted sunday to follow - it was all I could do to get out the bed to get a cup of tea, let alone face the weekly orders sheets!
But now Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday seem to have snuck past me in a maelstrom of work! and this is just not right, no self respecting unicorntreeboss should really have to work this hard - thats what minions are for!
I remember now!
Monday was sort out the music day, who knew we had Rod Stewart hidden in the back corner, let alone Status Quo, and ohh but assistant manager minion was ecstatic when she found not just The Andrew Sisters to play (hah, but now its sold so its at least a week till we have to listen to that one again!) but then George Formby - and do you know what is most scary? that sold too! and not to an old person but to a twenty something! so it was the music that caused the memory loss!
Tuesday? oh yes that was the big Science Fiction Delivery day and also the Puzzle Book pallet delivery! Can I just say that there are some great Sciecnce Fiction books out there and I can heartily recommend Jim Butcher as an absolutely great read, the tag line of the series is:
Magic - it can get a guy Killed! a very funny alternate reality type book thats part magic/fantasy and part Crime Fiction. absolutely great, lots of humour with enough suspense to keep you going.
Keep your eyes peeled and I will be doing a review of it in the next few days - providing of course that a week doesn't run away from me again!
So what was Wednesday - oh yes the New Computer Day! at last a computer that works!! one that will do more than one task at a time and doesn't take 20 minutes to connect to the net, thus we can now much more swiftly look things up again! and not only was it new computer day - which both made the assistant manager minion smile with great great joy but also pull out her hair in set-up frustration at times - but also the Ingram order arrived from America with a load (seven ) of new Nora Roberts titles, the newest ones available and not yet in this country, and also a load of Louis L'amour westerns, a number of which were sold as we were taking them out of the box by an over eager happy customer who was passing at just the right time! Oh and lots of Torey Haydon books were also in the box.
The most amazing thing is that I only sent off the order late Saturday afternoon and it was here in the UK first thing Wednesday morning, absolutely amazing.
So that brings us to today and today was Gibson Games delivery day, and we now have Elvis and also WWII Warship Playing Cards and lots of beautiful jigsaws - Thomas Kinkade ones and Beano ones, yes Beano and Dandy jigsaws, just how cool is that, oh and lots of Christmas designs - well come on it is October now!
Anyway hopefully this manic rush that subsumes my blog and reading time will slow up a little as the minions return nicely to their appointed work places and mingle once again with the cheerful customers thus allowing me to return to what I am best at! being a unicorntreeboss!
So ok I can account for a manic, and I do mean manic, Saturday - me, unicorntreeboss, running the shop all by myself, do you know what that actaully meant?? that meant work! yes real work, me, interaction with cheerful customers and no time to sit and read and a not a minion in sight to boss! And how many jigsaws! I almost thought I was a jigsaw shop at one point and not a bookshop, you can tell the dark nights are acoming! - so okay a manic saturday I do indeed recall.
Then an exhausted sunday to follow - it was all I could do to get out the bed to get a cup of tea, let alone face the weekly orders sheets!
But now Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday seem to have snuck past me in a maelstrom of work! and this is just not right, no self respecting unicorntreeboss should really have to work this hard - thats what minions are for!
I remember now!
Monday was sort out the music day, who knew we had Rod Stewart hidden in the back corner, let alone Status Quo, and ohh but assistant manager minion was ecstatic when she found not just The Andrew Sisters to play (hah, but now its sold so its at least a week till we have to listen to that one again!) but then George Formby - and do you know what is most scary? that sold too! and not to an old person but to a twenty something! so it was the music that caused the memory loss!
Tuesday? oh yes that was the big Science Fiction Delivery day and also the Puzzle Book pallet delivery! Can I just say that there are some great Sciecnce Fiction books out there and I can heartily recommend Jim Butcher as an absolutely great read, the tag line of the series is:
Magic - it can get a guy Killed! a very funny alternate reality type book thats part magic/fantasy and part Crime Fiction. absolutely great, lots of humour with enough suspense to keep you going.
Keep your eyes peeled and I will be doing a review of it in the next few days - providing of course that a week doesn't run away from me again!
So what was Wednesday - oh yes the New Computer Day! at last a computer that works!! one that will do more than one task at a time and doesn't take 20 minutes to connect to the net, thus we can now much more swiftly look things up again! and not only was it new computer day - which both made the assistant manager minion smile with great great joy but also pull out her hair in set-up frustration at times - but also the Ingram order arrived from America with a load (seven ) of new Nora Roberts titles, the newest ones available and not yet in this country, and also a load of Louis L'amour westerns, a number of which were sold as we were taking them out of the box by an over eager happy customer who was passing at just the right time! Oh and lots of Torey Haydon books were also in the box.
The most amazing thing is that I only sent off the order late Saturday afternoon and it was here in the UK first thing Wednesday morning, absolutely amazing.
So that brings us to today and today was Gibson Games delivery day, and we now have Elvis and also WWII Warship Playing Cards and lots of beautiful jigsaws - Thomas Kinkade ones and Beano ones, yes Beano and Dandy jigsaws, just how cool is that, oh and lots of Christmas designs - well come on it is October now!
Anyway hopefully this manic rush that subsumes my blog and reading time will slow up a little as the minions return nicely to their appointed work places and mingle once again with the cheerful customers thus allowing me to return to what I am best at! being a unicorntreeboss!
Monday, September 25, 2006
Read a Book today! Tanya Huff - Smoke & Shadows
Well, today was a stunning day at Unicorn Tree and Lincoln Central Market, I was able to assign jobs to the minions ( Sorting out DVD's and CD's and making sure they were all in the right places! heaps of fun! and it kept them out the way for most of the day so they did not notice me not busily working beside them!) and then take time to read a book for a change, and it was a darn good book too, in fact so good that I pretty much finished it in the one day and bus ride home!
Tanya Huff - Smoke and Shadows. (US Import - Daw Books - £6.99)
An excellent book set in Canada, pretty much takes place in a cheap budget film studio - and no not a porn studio! After all Vancouver is the place where most Science Fiction is filmed these days!
It takes place on the set of a Vampire Detective series which is a subtle nod to irony by Ms Huff as that's what the backbone of this stories series and characters is based on.
Anyway the gist of the story is that Tony, the main Character, works on this film set and has an ex-boyfriend who is a vampire and so is more aware of the unusual, so when Shadows start acting a little strangely he immediately picks up on it and starts investigating, at which point we find that a female wizard earth hoped a number of years ago and the evil Shadowlord she was escaping from has now found her gateway and is coming through to take over. Where is this portal - why the film studio of course, and what does the female wizard do as a job? yep, special effects! and see you thought it was all smoke and mirrors! but ahh there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio!
So ok I admit that my review sounds a little sarcastic but actually its quite a good yarn, enough action to keep it entertaining and enough cliches to make it fun as well. Lots of lines about bad writing and over dramatising that to me says Ms Huff has a real sense of humour and is more than willing to point the finger back at herself.
Go on give it a go, its got a gay hero, a bisexual vampire and a female wizard with cats, let alone a bad guy with the title of ShadowLord. Read it, it is actually good.
It takes place on the set of a Vampire Detective series which is a subtle nod to irony by Ms Huff as that's what the backbone of this stories series and characters is based on.
Anyway the gist of the story is that Tony, the main Character, works on this film set and has an ex-boyfriend who is a vampire and so is more aware of the unusual, so when Shadows start acting a little strangely he immediately picks up on it and starts investigating, at which point we find that a female wizard earth hoped a number of years ago and the evil Shadowlord she was escaping from has now found her gateway and is coming through to take over. Where is this portal - why the film studio of course, and what does the female wizard do as a job? yep, special effects! and see you thought it was all smoke and mirrors! but ahh there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio!
So ok I admit that my review sounds a little sarcastic but actually its quite a good yarn, enough action to keep it entertaining and enough cliches to make it fun as well. Lots of lines about bad writing and over dramatising that to me says Ms Huff has a real sense of humour and is more than willing to point the finger back at herself.
Go on give it a go, its got a gay hero, a bisexual vampire and a female wizard with cats, let alone a bad guy with the title of ShadowLord. Read it, it is actually good.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
I have just signed up to technorati and am claiming my blog in the hopes that lots more of you will see it and come by and join me in my blog adventures!
Technorati Profile
I have also just signed up to popdex as well - go visit popdex
Technorati Profile
I have also just signed up to popdex as well - go visit popdex
So OK, I have now added a link to my Blog to the Unicorn Tree Books page on www.lincolncentralmarket.co.uk, so hopefully a few more people will see it and feel the want to come and share their tales of literary derring do! and then again maybe not! lol
whichever it is at least I am here.
whichever it is at least I am here.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Welcome to Unicorn Tree Books Blog,
At last my own store and now my own blog - will wonders never cease!
I am intending that this blog will be all about the day to day life and adventures of a bookshop boss, minions and cheerful customers, and also about the books we like and read.
I am hoping it will be helpful and also interactive and fun.
So come join me in cyberspace and dont forget to come in and visit the shop too!
At last my own store and now my own blog - will wonders never cease!
I am intending that this blog will be all about the day to day life and adventures of a bookshop boss, minions and cheerful customers, and also about the books we like and read.
I am hoping it will be helpful and also interactive and fun.
So come join me in cyberspace and dont forget to come in and visit the shop too!
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