Abingdon Extravaganza and Sam Jordison

This Friday (24th Nov) the Christmas Lights get turned on in Abingdon - traditionally the shops all stay open late, everyone dresses up, it's a fun evening for everyone. Several of the shops will be liberally dishing out mulled wine as well. We shall be opening until 8pm, and - if we can find anything vaguely 'tudor' to wear (the theme this year) - we might dress up too. This year, being as it's the 450th anniversary of the Charter being granted - a horse will dramatically ride across the bridge into the town to hand the mayor the Charter, and this will be the cue for the Lights going on, and a firework display. All good fun. I'm sure the abingdon blogger will cover the event in some detail at the weekend. We've decked out the children's room with snowflakes as part of our snowflake challenge. Each snowflake has a children's book character, and children are being asked to find all the snowflakes, identify the characters, make a well-known Christmas word, and then enter our competition. A suitable children's literary prize is up for grabs (to find out exactly what, you'll have to come into the shop). We've also managed to squeeze in another author event before December - next Wednesday evening we will be welcoming local author Sam Jordison, author of Bad Dates - a book delving into the soft, fleshy underbelly of dating in the 21st century, and the real-life horror stories of When Dates Go Bad. With his first book Crap Towns (claimed by some to be the real 'rough guide to the UK') Sam managed to upset huge swathes of the country - including Oxford (which was included). So our first question to him next Wednesday is: why did he end up moving to Oxford afterwards? More interesting, in light of recent media discussions on the value (literary or otherwise) of blog and Amazon reviews, is his recent confession in the Guardian that he inserted his own five-star book review on Amazon. I'm keen to learn if there's been any fall out about this... He appears at Mostly Books Wednesday November 29th at 7pm - tickets £3, redeemable against a purchase on the night.