IBW Bookshop Party and Author Takeover - 15th June

Come along to Mostly Books to help celebrate the start of Independent Bookshop Week.  There will be cake, bubbles, authors, giveaways and a general party atmosphere!

Over the course of the day, the team will be hosting a range of authors who will be taking over our tills and social media, chatting to customers, signing books and generally causing chaos!

No booking required, just turn up and enjoy the fun!

The Mostly Books Refurbishment & Bookshop Party!

After some late nights and a lot of hard work from the team, friends and family, the newly refurbished ‘Mostly Books’ opened for business on Thursday 22^nd June, having been shut for three days to get the work done.

We were keen to maintain the essence of the shop that is so well loved by the local community, whilst giving it a bit of a refresh after the transition of the business - we hope that you agree that we have managed to do just that!

After a couple of days of ‘business as usual’ activities in the new look shop, we threw a ‘Bookshop party’ on Saturday June 24^th to officially mark the handover of the business from the previous owners, Mark & Nicki Thornton, to myself, Sarah Dennis.

It was a brilliant day, with the shop buzzing with visitors from the minute we opened at 9am to when we closed the door at 5pm.  The pop of champagne corks rang out throughout the day, with visitors enjoying a glass of bubbles and a slice of cake (courtesy of one of our wonderful in-house cooks, Julia) whilst browsing the selection of books on offer.

It was wonderful to have so many customers, friends and family join us in the celebration of such a momentous occasion.

At 1pm, the mayor of Abingdon, Jan Morter, was kind enough to give a speech and to do an official ‘handover of the key’ ceremony to formally mark the transfer of ownership.  I, for one, found it rather emotional as I was formally handed over the responsibility of such a wonderful business.  

Thank you to everyone who came along to support us on the day and to all of our loyal customers who have been so supportive during this period of change.  I am very much looking forward to working with you all in the future and to continue to develop the wonderful business that is ‘Mostly Books’!

The Gruffalo visits Mostly Books

To celebrate our being awarded "Julia Donaldson's Children's Independent Bookshop of the Month" for August, we received a visit from The Gruffalo. When you run an independent bookshop, it doesn't get much better than this...

Once we knew The Gruffalo was coming, we thought we'd best invite some people to celebrate with us. So over two sessions in the afternoon, approximately 50 children joined us in the courtyard garden.

There was a special reading of 'The Gruffalo'...take a look at what happened when someone made his entrance at a certain point in the story...

(Notice we did our best to reduce the overall scariness of the situation, but a few of the children were, quite frankly, terrified)

There was quite a lot of posing for photographs...

And Imogen had baked some rather splendid Gruffalo cake, which also helped relax everyone into the mood of the thing...

After the cake was eaten, and goodie bags passed around, The Gruffalo had a VIP tour of Mostly Books:

Huge thanks to everyone who came and made the day so memorable - and apologies to those that wanted to come, but we were too full. There is still time to enter 'Mouse's Gruffalo Pie' competition - and The Gruffalo's Child seems to have taken up residence at the back of the shop...

And the winner was...

OK - I'm a bit 'jaded' this morning, so this is a quick blog from the hotel lobby, but we won! It was an incredible evening, I did take lots of pictures - so expect a more complete blog once we're safely back in the shop. Can't remember too much about our acceptance speech, so I hope I didn't do a Halle Berry, but it was all a bit overwhelming. It was also geat to meet the wonderful people from Mr Bs (who won independent bookshop of the year - how cool is that?) and also Emma from Snowbooks (Innovation in the Book Industry Award). What a night - thanks for everyone's messages of support, and to everyone back in Abingdon - expect a party at the shop in the very near future...