The Bedside Crow

Event: Saturday 5th December 5pm. Bob Marley the Untold Story. Chris Salewicz.

Lively up Yourself!

Join us at 5pm on December 5th, for an early Christmas drink, some music and a reading by author Chris Salewicz from his book Bob Marley the Untold Story.

Chicken Biriyani South Indian Style.

From the recipe here.

Pickles were delicious, too.
 
 

Julie Myerson can just fuck off, then.

I buy all books on Amaz*n now because of the huge price difference. But I still use bookshops as places to go to first - to remind me of what's out there and to look at and touch the books.

Quoted in a sidebar to this article in today's Observer.

[And I say that as someone who has both personally sold her plenty of books in the past, and also, sold plenty of her books in the past - in the past,  being the significant part of that sentence.]

So that's the week's profits right there, then.

Bugger. Left the fan heater on overnight. Lovely and toasty warm, but it must have cost a couple of quid.
 

Well, it's not everyday that somebody calls from Hungary to order a copy of Robert Walser's The Tanners (with the introduction by W. G. Sebald).

And we had it in stock.

A friend in publishing writes:

A friend in publishing writes: Borders RIP - that's our net profit for this yr wiped out then -& thus fck all chance of any xmas bonus...again.

(Almost) late opening the shop.

Because I was listening to Steve Reid on Midweek talking about this.

I love the idea that as a kid he lived next door to Thelonius Monk, who used to go out into the street and direct the traffic.

Kathy Lette supports a cinema for Crystal Palace.

 

And you can too. Links just over to the left there.

Oh my aching sides.

So should online retailers pay a modest levy on their substantial profits to reward independent bookshops for drumming up their trade?

Tom Sutcliffe ponders the future of his local independent bookshop - without doing any maths, save for simple subtraction, and don't get me started on the irony of his book example of choice. Survival of the fittest, what?

[Elsewhere in the same paper I read that independent bookshops are suffering from the ending of the Harry Potter gravy train. Yeah, right, lots and lots of gravy.]

Death in Sainsbury's (the second annual bullet to Clarkson's head).

The first annual here.

Freedom, Rhythm and Sound.

A week or so ago somebody from Soul Jazz Records 'phoned to tell me about the book Freedom,Rhythm and Sound - revolutionary Jazz Original Cover Art 1965-83 compiled by Gilles Peterson and Stuart baker. 

 I said, yes we've got that, it's great. Sold three copies already. 

I sensed that this wasn't the response that they had been getting from some other independent bookshops.

We chatted some more and then a couple of days ago a copy of the accompanying CD arrived in the post.

Which made my day (thanks Steve). And so to celebrate I give you the Art Ensemble of Chicago in their pomp.