Tag Archives: book haul

Happening Annie Ernaux book haul
Books

Book haul: London Indie Press Book Fair

I do love when the world conspires in my favour. I mean, it doesn’t happen as often as I’d like, but that’s not the point. A few weeks ago I booked a train down to London to see my baby brother (FYI: a fully grown man at this point, but forever baby brother) and what pops up in my Instagram feed? This bad boy:

YES. Right up my book-strewn alley. The London Indie Press Book Fair is a free event organised by Dostoyevsky Wannabe and the Contemporary Small Press Project that invites independent presses to sell their books and zines, chat about industry trends and celebrate the industry we love – with drinks and snacks available, of course. Is it even a literary event if you don’t have a glass of red in your hand?

I wish I could have bought something from every press there, but there’s only so much a girl can carry back up north. Here’s what I picked up!

Happening by Annie Ernaux

Kong’s Garden by Hwang Jungeun

Bad Boy Poet by Scott Manley Hadley and Shitstorm by Fernando Strigotti

book blogger newcastle

If you’re curious about all the indie presses that were there, here’s the full list:

Anyway, my fellow bookworms, I need to go and crack on with this growing to-be-read pile or there won’t be any book reviews. THE HORROR. If you’ve read any of these, or have any other indie publishers and presses you’d like to share, go for it!

-Kelly

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the acid house irvine welsh book
Books, Haul, Personal Style

Books and a spot of vintage shopping

Welcome to the first post of 2018, ladies and gents! We’re a little too late in the month to talk about such things as New Year’s Resolutions (I’d probably say something generic like ‘eat more fruit’ and ‘spend more time switching off from the online world’, you get the gist of things), so I thought we could dive right in with a few bits and pieces I’ve acquired over the festive season and first bit of January. Onward!

Books

Okay, you might remember that when I finally made the big move to Newcastle, I was only able to bring about ten books with me. I own around 370+ books in total. It was difficult. Painful. My shelves were a little too empty for my liking, and the bookshops here are too tempting for my own good, so I have actually acquired a few new tomes (and brought a few back with me when I visited Malta last year).

Let’s start with a bit of a Bukowski haul…

The three at the top (Post Office, Factotum, Women) were Christmas gifts from my baby brother, and Love is a Dog from Hell was something I picked up with a Waterstones gift voucher. Bukowski is one of my favourite poets of all time, but I’m ashamed to say I’ve never owned any of his books at all! I also picked up a copy of Stephen Fry’s Mythos with another gift voucher. Lucky me!

Next up, the books I bought when I went to Barter Books in Alnwick (again). I might have mentioned this before, but Barter Books is a gorgeous little second-hand bookshop just an hour and twenty minutes away from Newcastle city centre by bus. It used to be a train station, and today looks like something out of Hogsmeade:

And here’s a look at what I picked up from Barter:

book haul

the acid house irvine welsh book

Vintage Bits

A while ago, I spent some time looking into the thrift/vintage shopping scene here in Newcastle. I love dipping into charity shops and hitting vintage shops to find unique bits and pieces to make my outfits stand out. Sort of. Anyway, I picked up this pendant from The Yesterday Society in Grainger Market:

And these awesome pieces from FLIP American Vintage:

vintage shopping

Snuggly-as-hell 1980s jumper

vintage ralph lauren

Green striped Ralph Lauren shirt

 

 If you’ve got any books (or vintage shops!) to recommend, hit me up in the comments! 

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Books, Travel

Bella Italia: Books I bought.

Buongiorno a tutti! If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll know that I’ve spent the last week or so shamelessly gallivanting around Italy, eating all of the food and drinking all of the red wine. Despite going through 5 years of secondary school Italian, I have a bit of a confidence problem when it comes to actually speaking to someone and reading a few pages takes forever.

That’s a problem for another day – preferably one to be solved while sitting in a bustling piazza sipping cappuccino and reading something in Italian. Until then, I’m perfectly happy hunting down small but very well-stocked English sections in librerias dotted around the cities.

La Feltrinelli

I made my first purchase at La Feltrinelli in Pisa – a treasure trove for those of us who are as obsessed with pretty stationery as we are with books. I almost didn’t care what this particular one was about, I just knew the cover was beautiful in its simplicity. Then I saw the title, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. Sold.

IBS.it

My only ‘problem’ with this bookshop is that I actively have to stop myself from popping in every time I walk past it – it’s 2 minutes away from the Duomo. Oh well! It was a tough call, but I exercised serious self-control and only bought one book – F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned. Honestly now, would you be able to resist a book that looks this good? Didn’t think so.

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The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Galileo Galilei Museum

The first time I visited Florence, I bought a Thames & Hudson book about Greek and Roman Mythology from the Uffizzi Gallery. This time around, I hit the immensely interesting Galileo Galilei Museum and (of course) had to buy something from the gift shop.

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The Great Scientists in Bite-Sized Chunks by Nicola Chalton and Meredith MacArdle

I have a few books to get through before I read these beauties but I’ll be posting a review on one of them soon enough. Promise!

What are you guys reading right now?

-Kelly

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