Books for Christmas Part 10: The Science of the Absurd, the Music of Nick Cave and the History of Mankind - Science, Nature and Music books for Christmas

The Naming of the Shrew - John Wright - £14.99
Latin names - frequently unpronounceable, all too often wrong and always a tiny puzzle to unravel - have been annoying the layman since they first became formalised as scientific terms in the eighteenth century. Why on earth has the entirely land-loving Eastern Mole been named Scalopus aquaticus, or the Oxford Ragwort been called Senecio squalidus - 'dirty old man'? With wonderfully witty style and captivating narrative, this book will make you see Latin names in a whole new light.

You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes - Chris Hadfield - £20.00
Hadfield’s 'An Astronaut’s Guide To Life On Earth' became a bestseller in the wake of his photos and educational videos from the International Space Station, not to mention his TED talk, and his much-viewed zero gravity rendition of “Space Oddity”. This is his collection of breathtaking photos taken from the ISS, arranged continent by continent, and representing one (idealized) orbit of the Earth. The photos are accompanied by a commentary from Hadfield, whose expert eye sees more in the images than we ever could.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Harari - £25.00
As far as themes go, they don’t get much bigger than the entire history of our species. Yuval Harari’s ‘Sapiens’ is one of those monumental works that gives a dizzying perspective on how we came to rule – and threaten – the entire planet. It starts with the changes in our brain that allowed us to tell stories, imagine alternative scenarios, and out-manoeuvre other species (notably Neanderthals). From there we become farmers, develop religion, invent money, harness technology and threaten widespread extinction – including our own. The writing is superb – never dry, occasionally brazen, at times almost sardonic – and never afraid to come off the fence in areas that are controversial: did we domesticate wheat, or did it domesticate us? Did stockpiling food lay the psychological seeds for consumerism? Are we happier now than *any* of our ancestors? And what is going to replace our species, as surely as we replaced earlier species?

What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions - Randall Munroe - £14.99 
When will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than living? How many humans would a T-Rex rampaging through New York need to eat a day? Munroe - ex NASA roboticist and creator of ur-science web cartoon xkcd - answers the absurd questions with responses that are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity - but based on serious science! (Signed copies available whilst stocks last)

Simpsons & Their Mathematical Secrets - Simon Singh - £8.99
Brilliant writers have smuggled in mathematical jokes throughout the cartoon's twenty-five year history, exploring everything from to Mersenne primes, from Euler's equation to the unsolved riddle of P vs. NP, Singh offers an entirely new insight into the most successful show in television history.

The Wisdom of Tees - Max Adams - £12.99
Trees are marvels of nature, still-standing giants of extraordinary longevity. In a beautifully written sequence of essays, anecdotes and profiles of Britain's best-loved species (from yew to scots pine), Max Adams explores both the amazing biology of trees and humanity's relationship with wood and forest across the centuries. Embellished with images from John Evelyn's classic SYLVA (1664), this is a passionate and informative celebration of trees and of man's ingenuity in exploiting their resources: the perfect gift for anyone who cares about the natural world. 

Live At The Brixton Academy - Simon Parkes and JS Rafaeli - £9.99
In 1982, aged twenty-three, Simon Parkes paid GBP1 for a virtually derelict building in Brixton. Over the next fifteen years he turned it into Britain's most iconic music venue. And now he's telling his story: full of fond - and wild - reminiscences of the famous musicians who played at the venue, including Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, Lou Reed, The Ramones, New Order, the Beastie Boys and The Smiths.

A Little History: Photographs of Nick Cave and Cohorts 1981-2013 - Bleddyn Butcher - £18.99
When Bleddyn Butcher first saw The Birthday Party play, back in 1981, he was astonished. And then enthralled. He set about trying to catch their lightning in his Nikon F2AS. That quixotic impulse became a lifelong quest. A little history got made on the way.

Collected here for the first time are the fruits of his labour. A Little History is an extraordinary document, tracking Nick Cave's creative career from the apoplectic extravagance of The Birthday Party to the calmer disquiet of 2013's Push The Sky Away via snapshots, spotlit visions and sumptuous, theatrical portraits. It mixes the candid and uncanny, the spontaneous and the patiently staged, and includes eyeball encounters with Cave's baddest lieutenants, men for the most part who long since burned their own bridges down.

Truck Festival 2008

Back at the beginning of the year we got a call from someone asking us if we wanted to sell tickets for the Truck Festival this year. Apparently Dawsons (RIP) and Modern Music before them used to sell tickets locally. Since their demise last year the organisers were looking for another outlet in Abingdon. Since we've started to sell music, they came to check us out - and offered us the gig. Of course, I was completely ignorant of what the Truck Festival actually was (I've never been a festival kind of guy). But, it is a local festival - and we liked the sound of the ethos (that and the fact that we're usually willing to give something a go often before examining some of the finer implications). I blithely said "sure thing" - so consequently we're the Abingdon outlet for Truck Festival tickets this year. We're also selling tickets to the inaugural Wood Festival at Braziers Park in May. I guess I assumed that this was some small festival, the vast majority of tickets would sell online, and we'd get a few people coming to get them from us. Au contraire. We began to get a hint about this when people started to phone us to find out when tickets would be available. When several of our customers said they would be coming in on the morning the tickets go on sale, and even our DHL delivery driver got all excited and commented on the expected demand, we began to get a bit worried. Then I spotted this article in our local paper. Eh? Queues expected??! Truck - it turns out - is somewhat of a big deal, as this article in the Guardian suggests (although well done to the Gruaniad for getting the ticket price wrong - it's £60). In addition, the organisers are very keen to give local people the best possible chance of getting tickets, meaning the tickets go on sale locally a week before they go on sale nationally. This will be Wednesday morning at 11.11am (it's the 11th Truck Festival apparently, do you see what they've done there?) We were consequently fearing some sort of British Airways T5-style fiasco on Wednesday morning when our usual 2 members of staff (me, and Ali who only started last week) will be faced with hundreds of festival goers queuing up Stert Street eager for tickets. However, unlike BA, help is at hand - one of the festival organisers appeciates that this is our 'first time' and will be on hand to come to the shop and assist us in selling the tickets. It still might get a bit hairy for a while though, so perhaps some sort of storytelling to the queues might be in order... So - if you're up for Truck tickets, we'll see you in the shop at 11.11am on Wednesday...

QS - Quite Sad

Yesterday, I made one of my periodic trips into Oxford, on what is usually a mixture of business and pleasure. In this case, an emergency trip for a stock item that we screwed up on (this music ordering is still proving a bit tricky), some general soul-enhancing bookselling inspiration around Blackwells and the QI Bookshop, and then on to some light cloak-and-dagger stock-spying in the big chains. It was a gorgeous day, lots of students milling about, throngs of bicycles in the Broadway - obviously if this kind of thing winds you up (bl**dy students, etc.), then you're not missing anything, but I do feel lucky that people travel from all over the world to soak up the Oxford atmosphere, and I can pop in whenever I like (sort of). Anyway, armed with Timothy in his buggy, and thus disguised as a sleep-deprived Dad (oh, actually, that's not a disguise...) I was deep undercover and began my mission. Within the space of about 1/4 mile on the Broadway, you have possibly the biggest concentration of retail bookselling anywhere on Earth. A few years ago there was Thornton's Bookshop as well, which sadly closed - although the shop lives on in cyberspace. The unrivalled staff in the Blackwells Music shop were absolutely brilliant. They helped me carry said buggy to the top of their building - and back down again five minutes later, without a grumble (akthough Timothy did his bit and delivered one of his winning smiles the whole time). I then went round the corner to the QI Building - home to the QI Bookshop. And discovered some sad news. The QI Bookshop is closing on December 22nd. This is Quite Sad. Quirky does not begin to describe the bookshop, with its idiosyncratic section layout and deliberate stocking of obscure and non-bestselling hardback fiction, it is a lovely, unique place to visit. And it was their Christmas catalogue last year (neatly tied with ribbon) that inspired ours. So - is this another "small independent closes in face of severe competition" story? Has the challenge of selling books around the corner from three enormous retailers taken its toll? Er, no. Apparently the company that makes QI was recently taken over, and the bookshop has no place in the new company's future plans. Which is Quite A Shame.

Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti...doh!

A few weeks ago, Dawsons - a large music shop in Abingdon High Street - sadly closed its doors. The shop used to be called Modern Music, and had an enviable reputation for its range of musical instruments and expertise in all matters musical. It was taken over by Dawsons - a chain based in Warrington - last year, and it's a great shame that it closed less than a year after taking over.

Anyway, some of our customers were quite upset at not being able to order music in the town. We discussed it with them, and we also had the opportunity to talk to a major music wholesaler at the recent Gardners Trade Show. After some consideration, we said - why don't we offer sheet music and music book ordering as a service?

I mean, the books all have ISBNs. Said wholesaler says they stock loads of them. Some are even available through our usual book wholesaler. How difficult can it be?

So, a few weeks ago, with a bit of a flurry, we announced the launch of our music ordering service. It also gave us a wonderful excuse to beef up our music section.

The response was hugely positive. Lots of people were very impressed that we decided to move into this area, and we started receiving our first orders.

Which is where the problems started.

Admittedly we were a bit speculative about the whole thing, and realised that there might be a bit of a learning curve (ho ho) and some jargon to learn. Well, I've learned a lot. For example, when someone asks for a title containing the words "flute with bass continuo", I now know that "bass continuo" isn't a musical instrument. That sort of thing.

But I hadn't appreciated just what a challenge getting hold of books would be. Of the first six orders, one was available through our music wholesaler. We discovered that we would have to set up additional accounts with another 3 wholesalers (which we did, albeit on a pro-forma basis - they always want about 6 trade references, and our existing suppliers get a teensy bit hacked off when you keep asking them to provide a reference). One title was so obscure, it is only available as a print-on-demand title from an obscure source in the US and (technically) qualifies as a Googlewhack when you search for it.

So, 6 books, 5 seperate sources. As you can appreciate, these are hardly huge volumes we're putting through each of them. And it's a bit of a shock when you start seeing terms and conditions like "free postage only for orders above £2,500" (it's £100 for our usual wholesalers). So it started to dawn on us that our service was going to be slightly less appealing to customers if they were going to have to pay the full whack of delivery charge for just one of little Johnny's flute books.

But it got worse. We tried to order a piano grade book set by the UK's largest examination board (this is a reasonable popular title). The response we got was "we don't sell that book to trade anymore". I'm sorry? But how on earth can we get it then?

Anyway, with our first few orders fulfilled, and only two customers severely hacked off with the delay (to whom I have already offered our sincerest apologies) we are now committed to cracking the music wholesaler 'code'. Our strategy now will be to talk directly to some of the music teachers in Abingdon (some of whom have already come into the shop) and try to anticipate which books are likely to be in demand in the future. And we're going to establish a service-level in terms of timescales for ordering, which should allow us to bulk up orders ourselves and absorb the delivery charges.

Other than that, I may just take up the piano myself.