Ben's Book Nook #1
a new era!
Well hi there!
Welcome to the newly-christened Ben’s Book Nook! I’ve taken advice from the famously unproblematic book Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg and I am leaning in. Everything is book-scented now. Can you smell it? That’s the smell of pages. It’s similar to the smell of dead trees but it’s more pretentious.
How do you like the new colours? In-house illustration champ Will Hughes has done us the gorgeous new primary-coloured Book Nook banner. We’re going for a sort of Sesame St vibe, which is in keeping with my aesthetic: sentient British muppet.
My big news is that we* have just announced three of the biggest shows I have ever put on of anything ever. I wish I could say there was some hyperbole in that sentence but there actually isn’t. We* are taking my part-comedy-show-part-book-club Ben’s Book Club to the Edinburgh Fringe! It will be there for 3 days - August 17-19th - in a (take a deep breath) 250 seat lecture hall called Assembly Studio 3.
The books we* have chosen are extremely fun and/or chewy and/or silly and/or controversial. They are as follows:
Isn’t that a bit of fun? Someone DM’d me on Instagram after I posted the list saying just the words: JESUS CHRIST. And those are exactly the type of flames I hoping to fan here. The guests will be revealed in good time - and are an absolute carousel of legends from TV and beyond. Keep your eyes peeled for that.
But in essence, the message here is: if you are going to the Fringe, if you know anyone who is, if you know of any Scottish people who like books, or just Scottish people in general, if you are aware of Scotland, if you have heard the words ‘Scotland’ or ‘books’ used in a sentence before - please direct your attention to buying tickets for these shows! 750 is a big number and I can see it behind my eyelids when I close my eyes to sleep.
Come to Ben’s Book Club at the Fringe!
*I like to say ‘we’ a lot these days. It makes it sound as if I have a team of NASA scientists or PR professionals with lanyards and headsets co-ordinating launches. I suppose in reality, the ‘we’ I’m referring to is me, my agent, and the voices. ‘We are announcing a show!’ ‘We are selling out!’ ‘We are legion! #legion’
Meanwhile, I do continue to be a full-time bookseller and comedian (sweaty smiling face emoji). So I’m working out my new hour of stand-up in the following locales very soon. Don’t miss out on these:
BRIGHTON - May 19, 20, 21 - Brighton Fringe
EDINBURGH - May 30 - Monkey Barrel Comedy
Meanmeanwhile, Ben’s Book Club continues apace in London - we have two more shows this summer in town. The May 25th club (Big Swiss by Jen Beagin) is very nearly sold out so I would mash your thumb against the book now button asap…
And our final summer show on July 5th is extremely exciting! Broaching the fantasy genre for the first time, and also doing a sort of couples therapy session, we’ve got Christopher MacArthur-Boyd and Grace Jarvis taking on Ursula LeGuin’s classic A Wizard of Earthsea…
Don’t miss out on these! We sell out every damn time - so grab your tickets while they’re there! Click the images for tickets.
Ok, now the promotion is done. Phew!
Reading-wise, I spent a lot of April trying to work through some older titles, rather than anything new. I’ve had a little grace to do this recently thanks to a couple of big shiny zeitgeist-y bestsellers that have distracted a wide range of my regular customers - Lena Dunham’s memoir, Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, Transcription by Ben Lerner - meaning I don’t have to give as many up-to-date recommendations. These big, well-reviewed, literary or literary-adjacent units operate as a sort of feathery lure for the rabid be-tote-bagged hounds on the shopfloor. I can throw London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe or Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash in one direction, watch Peckham’s humanities graduates slaver off after them while I repair to a corner to try and finish something published in 2014.
I also have motive to read old stuff at the moment. My partner has been away in Mexico for several months and she returns soon and I have to make space for her things again - so I am trying to be disciplined in reading the books I have lying around the flat. That way I can diagnose if they are actually good or not in reality, and not just in my mind - and if I don’t like them, I can thrust them into the charity shop for some other poor bastard to festoon their flat with. This is what I refer to as charity.
Of course, the plan has immediately back-fired: I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read and it’s all stayed in the house, converted into permanent A5 furniture. If anything I have made the issue worse. When my girlfriend returns with bags of Mexican souvenirs she will now have to convince me to throw away books that used to be things-I-might-possibly-enjoy, but are now things-that-form-the-very-tentpoles-of-my-personality. Uhoh.
Want to find out what those books were? Become a paid subscriber and you can pass through the glistening, cascading waterfall of the paywall to discover the hallowed land of my book recommendations!