It's been a Vintage Summer in more ways than one...

The end of August is always a good time to look back and reflect, before everyone has fully returned to school and the madness of Chr*stm*s starts to ramp up. But 2014 has been a Vintage Summer for us in more ways than one...

The gorgeous weather has meant that we've been able to do every single event since May in our beautiful courtyard garden, and our reading community have shared some very special moments with authors Alison Mercer, Bethan Roberts, Mark Forsyth, Louise Millar, Kate Clanchy and, yes, The Gruffalo. We've also been able to hold four bookgroup meetings in the garden as well...

Winning the 'Julia Donaldson Children's Independent Bookshop of the Month' for August meant a lot to us. We have had a lot of families in over the Summer, and we're looking forward to discovering (slightly nervously) how well our recommends went down over the long Summer holiday!

We also spent the whole of August celebrating Vintage Books - so if you did wonder what the weird, wonderful and, yes, 'vintage' items in the window were for the last month - now you know...

And we can't resist sharing a few pictures with you...

Our thanks to various family members for the props - and particularly to Oxfam just down the road who loaned us various delicate pieces for display!

We are still running our 'buy one, get another half-price' promotion mixing contemporary favourites such as William Boyd's 'Solo' with classics such as Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'... so if you haven’t had a chance to take a look at the great titles in this promotion, then you have one more week to enjoy!

If you need any inspiration for how to choose a good mix of interesting titles, for the whole of August we have been sharing our favourite Vintage titles with the hashtag #VintageSummer for young and old on Twitter - and we've collected all of them - and responses - in a single, storified, page.

Our bookgroups have been reading 'Birdsong' by Sebastian Faulks and 'I Am Forbidden' by Anouk Markovits – why not choose a classic to curl up with as the nights start slowly to draw in?

This week is also the last chance to join in with our 'cover treasure hunt' - children need to identify eight Vintage titles from cover details for a chance to win a great prize from Vintage.

We kicked off our 'Vintage Summer' with author Bethan Roberts...

...and we'll be closing our Vintage Summer by supporting Lewis Dartnell with his book 'The Knowledge' at The Unicorn Theatre, just down the road in Abingdon on Thursday, September 4 with Science Oxford Live...

 

Why not come along and hear an interesting, erudite and witty debate on how to rebuild civilization in the event of an apocalypse? You never know when these things might come in handy...