World Book Day at Our Bookshop

Living Magazines World Book Day at Our Bookshop, Tring

World Book Day

Today is World Book Day so we asked Ben, Alison, Sandra and Kim at Our Bookshop to tell us what it means to them.

‘Our Bookshop are proud to be involved in World Book Day this year. As our first year involved, it’s been like a little voyage into the unknown but we have been overwhelmed with the wonderful love and support the town has given the new addition to our lovely high street,’ said Ben.

World Book Day has been celebrated for the last 25 years to promote the love of books. It is celebrated in over 100 countries. Our Bookshop is offering a selection of specially made lovely books for just £1 or FREE with a school World Book Day voucher.

For more information, visit the shop or call them on 01442 827653.

The Year Without Summer

Guinevere GlasfurdComing up next month, Our Bookshop will be celebrating the award-winning novelist, Guinevere Glasfurd as she talks about her novel The Year Without Summer. The event, which takes place at 7.30pm on Monday 27 April, will be followed by a book signing. Tickets, which cost £6 including a glass of wine, are available here. Tickets are available to members for the next week when the remaining tickets will then go on general sale.

About The Year Without Summer

One event, six lives, a world changed:

Looking at a turning point in history, The Year Without Summer takes a climate catastrophe and explores how this moment impacted on class politics, scrutinises exploitation and injustice, and gives voice to those previously silenced in a historical novel that is prescient to our times, and future.

1815, Sumbawa Island, Indonesia:

Mount Tambora explodes in a cataclysmic eruption, killing thousands and causing famine, poverty and riots. Lives, both ordinary and privileged, are changed forever. Sent to investigate, ship surgeon Henry Hogg can barely believe his eyes. Once a paradise, the island is now solid ash, the surrounding sea turned to stone. But worse is yet to come: as the ash cloud rises and covers the sun, the seasons will fail.

1816:

In Switzerland, Mary Shelley finds dark inspiration. Confined inside by the unseasonable weather, thousands of famine refugees stream past her door. In Vermont, preacher Charles Whitlock begs his followers to keep faith as drought dries their wells and their livestock starve. In Britain, the ambitious and lovesick painter John Constable struggles to reconcile the idyllic England he paints with the misery that surrounds him. In the Fens, farm labourer Sarah Hobbs has had enough of going hungry while the farmers flaunt their wealth. And Hope Peter, returned from Napoleonic war, finds his family home demolished and a fence gone up in its place. He flees to London, where he falls in with a group of revolutionaries who speak of a better life, whatever the cost. As desperation sets in, Britain becomes racked with riots – rebellion is in the air.

For fans of David Mitchell and Andrew Miller, The Year Without Summer tells the story of a fateful year when temperatures fell and the summer failed to arrive. It is a story of the books written, the art made; of the journeys taken, of the love longed for and the lives lost. Six separate lives, connected only by an event many thousands of miles away. Few had heard of Tambora – but none could escape its effects.

Also in April

Chris Whitaker We Begin at the EndChris Whitaker – We Begin At The End

This is a story about good and evil. And a life somewhere in-between.

Reminiscent of The Coen brothers, Whitaker writes the landscape of bleak rural, forgotten America like no-one else, with characters that will break your heart.

Date: Saturday 4 April, 7.30pm.
Tickets available here.