When Featherbones took flight

"That's what it means to be mad. To be stripped of meaning, stripped so bare you feel like the skin's been torn from your back and you're just bones. Bare bones and nerves, stuck out in the cold, where it stings, it burns like nothing you've felt before." 

FEATHERBONES

Well, we were definitely mad with joy on a horrifically drenched Saturday in February when the delightful Thomas Brown from Madley Park, Witney, and former Woodgreen School student, joined us to present us his latest baby, novel number 2, Featherbones. 

The initial reading was a fine sample, but to truly appreciate the prose, the rhythm of the tale and the blurring of reality and Felix's delusions, you really need to read the whole thing! (hint hint) 

After, Thomas revealed to us about his inspirations for the novel, which include the amazing artist Kate MccGwire and her creepy yet beautiful feathery sculptures, author Poppy Z. Brite, Clive Barker and Marilynne Robinson's watery imagery from Housekeeping.

The shop was absolutely packed, both with

people and a happy buzz. 
Many thanks to all who came and made this day as wonderful as it was. And thank you to our own bookseller Matt! for climping lofty heights to get some good photos. 
We totally sold out, but fear not, more are to come.

- Love, Patty 

Book Launch of Thomas Brown's Featherbones

One of the greater pleasures of running a bookshop is to receive the honour of hosting a book launch. It doesn't happen very often, which makes the times when it does happen all the sweeter. 
    Launching a book is a little bit like the baptism of a baby. I wouldn't call it a birth - it would take away from the labour of love, pain, frustration, elation, white heat frenzy followed by staring helplessly at a blank screen, unable to form a single sentence, until suddenly that sentence is ready to be born and bursts out of you, and this happens about a million times where you take all these images and moments and scenes and weave them into a tapestry of narration, in which the aim is to never let the reader see your technique but to create the illusion of an alternate reality so seamlessly that characters become alive and sceneries burst with a life of their own. 

Most writers can quite possibly relate to that type of birth - it can take months, even years. But all the pains will be forgotten as soon as you hold your baby in your arms. Letting go of a book is often like letting your kid go out into the world, perhaps never completely happy or comfortable with it, but there it goes. 

Hosting a book launch is like having a party: to welcome the kid, to celebrate the efforts of its parent, to appreciate the beauty of the finished work and marvel at the complexity of its creation. 

So we at Waterstones Witney are delighted to invite everyone to the baptism of Featherbones, the wonderful brain child of Witney author Thomas Brown.

Please join us on Saturday, 13th February, from 1-3 pm, for a reading, a Q&A session, signing and general merriment with snacks, cake and drinks.

If you ever wanted to chat to an author about writing, his inspiration and his way to getting published, now is the opportunity. 
Plus, a party at a bookshop? Come on! It doesn't get better than this! 

Some of you may remember the launch of Mr Brown's first book Lynnwood, back in June 2013, which was a wonderful experience for everyone involved. Mr Brown's dark tale of the primal appetites of a small New Forest village was since shortlisted for the People's Book Prize.

His second novel again deals with the darker side of the human soul. It is an intricately woven tale of a young man's slow mental unravelling as he tries to come to terms with not just a traumatic incident in his childhood, but the very nature of his being. At times, the story is hard to take, as the bleakness and loneliness of the protagonist infiltrates your heart like a cold fog - unlike in other tales, his struggle is not romanticised or sentimentalised, despite the stunning beauty of the prose. 
Leaving the reader defenseless in Felix's increasingly unhinged mind, it begins to blur the lines between nightmare and waking, between reality and delusion, employing all the senses... all the while Felix's ordinary life continues.
Featherbones, with it's mythological elements and intense symbolism mixed into a bleak reality, reminded me much of Patrick Ness' A Monster Calls or Stephen King's Rose Madder - but just as if Susan Hill or Angela Carter had written it. 

We do hope you'll be able to join us. 

Lots of love, 

Patty 

Harry Potter Book Night - A Night of Spells

Calling all witches and wizards - and any muggle wannabes, too!

Join us at Hogwarterstones (see what we did there?) on Thursday the 4th of February for Harry Potter Book Night, our annual celebration of all things mysterious and magical!

If you're feeling creative, why not contribute your most effective and enchanting spell to our highly sought-after Hogwarterstones Book of Spells, a tome so powerful that in the wrong hands could bring down civilisation as we know it? Or, cook up your most intoxicating potion recipes, and commit them to our anthology forevermore.

As if that wasn't enough, we will also have with us a certain nasally-challenged special guest - yes, the Dark Lord himself (no, not Peter Mandelson). He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named will be joining us for a game of Pin The Nose On Voldemort, so start getting some practice in! 

Plus, of course, we'll still be open for business, selling all your prescribed wizarding textbooks, as well as the brand new Harry Potter Magical Creatures Colouring Book and the beautiful Illustrated version of The Philosopher's Stone - don't forget your galleons!

The official event starts at 4:00, but we'll have Harry Potter colouring out all day.

Don your robes, grab your wards, jump on your brooms, and join us for a magical evening!

Love, Owen

Award-winning author Catherine Chanter at Witney Library!

Don't make plans for 23 March! At 7:30, at Witney Library, Catherine Chanter, an Oxfordshire author who won the Lucy Cavendish Prize 2013 for her debut "The Well", which is now being published by Simon & Schuster, will talk and answer questions about her new novel.

To take it from the experts, Jessie Burton, author of the glorious "The Miniaturist", is raving about "The Well":

"There was so much that impressed me… The boldness with which Catherine depicts her characters in their bravery and emotional squalor was incredible... whilst she showed how we manipulate each other, she also focused on the harder, hidden truths about how in turn we want, or need, to be manipulated ourselves.... Set against the natural beauty of the Well, Catherine also paints an exquisitely painful portrait of a marriage under threat - not just from an unnerving meteorology, but the tempests of the mind.... The Well asks us where do we seek refuge, and why? And perhaps it shows us that what is left after all is suffered, is love. Battered, weathered, at the end of the novel it comes cresting over the hill, a herald of relief. Bravo, that woman. I loved this book!"

Good, evocative writing is enough to get this here bookseller totally engrossed in a book. Just listen to this!

'One summer was all it took before our dream started to curl at the edges and

stain like picked primroses. One night is enough to swallow a lifetime of lives.'

But what is it about?

 

When Ruth Ardingly and her family first drive up from London in their grime-encrusted car and view The Well, they are enchanted by a jewel of a place, a farm that appears to offer everything the family are searching for. An opportunity for Ruth. An escape for Mark. A home for their grandson Lucien.

But The Well's unique glory comes at a terrible price, and quickly Ruth's paradise becomes a prison, Mark's dream a recurring nightmare, and Lucien's playground a grave.
With the pace of a thriller and the heart of a literary smash hit, The Well is a dark and devastating tale of obsession, motherhood and the complexity of female relationships, wrapped inside a gripping whodunit.

TICKETS ARE FREE, INCLUDE REFRESHMENTS AND CAN BE COLLECTED FROM WITNEY LIBRARY, WELCH WAY FROM THE COUNTER.

TICKETS ARE LIMITED AND WILL BE OFFERED ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS

And the winner of the Mother's Day Drawing Competition is.... *drumroll*

Some of you may remember that Waterstones held a Mother's Day drawing competition at the start of the year, asking children to submit a drawing of their mother to be used on our Mother's Day window and shop posters. Considering that Waterstones has over 300 shops country-wide, you can imagine that'd be a strapping heap of submissions. While there isn't just one winner - several submissions will be on the posters - it still chuffs us to bits that one of them comes from Witneyshiretown.

Little Edgar Varese's Mumsie will be gracing our Mother's Day poster - congratulations, Edgar!

Oh YES it's a Gruffalo!

It's been a few days now... too many days since our Gruffalo Tea Party without an update! Nina really put her heart into the preparation (though she enjoyed every minute of it). And we really got a sample of the lovely Witney spirit: our darling Susan, former Children's Bookseller and loved by many of our customers, who now runs the Cook shop around the corner from Hackett's, volunteered to do what she does best: story time with all the eager children that showed up.

On the same day, in the morning, a lady called Anna, who had just come in to buy a few books, volunteered to return for the event to do free face painting, just because "she loves the shop". What an utterly wonderful thing to say and do, and what great community spirit this displays - I have lived in a few places, and grown up anonymously in a big city, but have never experienced this kind of thing.
Lordy we LOVE Witney!

So here is a big THANK YOU to all of you who turned up - so MANY of you - and made this event truly wonderful with your enthusiasm. So many children showed up dressed up, bright-faced, with toy Gruffalos, and one baby even wearing a Gruffalo outfit that was unbearably cute.
There were cupcakes, and balloons, and children joining in, shouting the good lines in unison, and booksellers nearly fainting from all the balloon-blowing (but one cannot say no to a darling
child eagerly holding out a pudgy hand in balloon-envy) - good times were had by all. Hope to see you all again soon!

Half Term Joy and Banter

Bet y'all can't wait for Half Term! :)
Well, if the weather stays as it is, don't be worried about finding things to do. We've got loads of stuff in here to keep the kids entertained: stickerbooks, tales of adventure, Lego, puzzles, games, art supplies, and if the sun comes out again, we also have guide books to explore wildlife and the Great Outdoors, or to get cracking in the garden.

And to top it all off, as it's the 15th anniversary of the Gruffalo, we'll have a

GRUFFALO TEA PARTY!

There'll be pretty Gruffalo decorations, story time, cakes and biscuits, mask making and Gruffalo Hide-and-Seek.

It all kicks off on 30th May at 2pm, headed by our lovely Children's Bookseller Nina.

So hopefully we'll see you there!