🚨REVIEWERS WANTED🚨
Is riveting historical fiction with powerful themes your bag? Do you have a blog or like posting reviews online? Please do get in touch if so! We have some really exciting review opportunities coming up soon!
Love and Pride
Today marks the long awaited Spring Equinox and after a wet dark winter here in Cumbria I've been celebrating. Sweltering and recklessly "casting clouts" all over the place in the 13 degree heat, which it turns out is my ideal maximum temperature because I was actually a bit too hot…
Writing, thinking, reading. A blog post about having 3 jobs, being distracted and making space for what matters.
I'm sharing this on behalf of a very very dear friend and a family who really deserve a break. I've known Robert for almost 40 years, his wife Jane was one of my closest friends, I was their childminder for a while, our children grew up together gofund.me/5f05460b0
Lesley! Mike T. sent me your link - we must all be feeling nostalgic for lost friends in our old age. I can't even remember how we lost touch but I've tried to find you a few times. I live in the Lakes & it would be amazing to catch up x
I’m thrilled to announce that I will be appearing at this year’s Words by the Water festival in
Keswick on Saturday 14th March to talk about my new book, 'An A-Z of Beatrix Potter'. See here for the full festival programme and to book tickets: x.com/cumbriaengli...
Amazingly, Zahawi only got round to deleting the below after the press conference announcing his defection to Reform.
A stack of books on the bookshop table, with bookshelves beyond. Top 20 books are: 1. Rory Stewart, Middleland (Jonathan Cape) 2. Polly Atkin, The Company of Owls (Elliott and Thompson) - in hardback 3. Esther Rutter, All Before Me (Granta) 4. David Nicholls, You Are Here (Sceptre) 5. Stephen G Rae, Folklore of the Lake District (Folklore Press) 6. James Rebanks, The Place of Tides (Penguin) 7. William Wordsworth, Selected Poems (Macmillan Collector's Library) 8. Robert Macfarlane, Is A River Alive? (Hamish Hamilton) 9. Alfred Wainwright, Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells: 70th Anniversary Edition Box Set (Quarto/Alfred Wainwright Books & Memorabilia) 10. Polly Atkin, The Company of Owls (Elliott and Thompson) - in paperback 11. Sarah Hall, Helm (Faber) 12. Jack Cornish, The Lost Paths (Penguin) 13. Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky (Penguin) 14. Tracy Chevalier, The Glassmaker (The Borough Press) 15. Tom Chesshyre, Lost in the Lakes (Summersdale) 16. Samantha Harvey, Orbital (Vintage) 17. Kim Tillyer, Beginner's Guide to Cyanotype (Search Press) 18. Tiffany Francis-Baker, Concise Foraging Guide (Bloomsbury Wildlife) 19. Simon Armitage and Beth Munro (illustr.), Dwell (Faber) 20. Ellie Wood, The Hotel at the Heart of the Lakes (HarperNorth)
Our 20 top selling books at Sam Read's for 2025 look like this! Top 5 were:
1. Rory Stewart, Middleland
2. Polly Atkin, The Company of Owls HB
3. Esther Rutter, All Before Me
4. David Nicholls, You Are Here
5. Stephen G Rae, Folklore of the Lake District
What a year, and many thanks to all who have supported my writing endeavours
Especially @samreadbookseller.bsky.social and @bookendscarlisle.bsky.social 💚
#folklore #lakedistrict #booksky
Winter flowering plant varieties with pink flowers and some pink Rowan berries on a bright turquoise linen background
Winter is pinker than you'd expect:
Photo featuring an older woman of Inuit heritage sitting on a stool facing forwards in a studio with a printed artwork on the wall behind her
"I am the light of happiness and I am a dancing owl" Kenojuak Ashevak, Inuk artist #womensart
Furness Book Fair, 2026
Open to an indie authors and indie bookshops in the South Lakes area. Contact me for more details.
white circle in a blue background and the words "It's Monday! What are you reading?" in the circle
It's Monday again and today I'm reading "Utterly Lazy and Inattentive: Martin Parr in Words and Pictures" by Wendy Jones and Martin Parr
What book(s) are you reading this week?
💙📚 #BookSky #AmReading #MondayReads #TBR
alt text in images please
Martin Parr photograph of a brown sofa , Signs of the Times 1992
I'm reading Martin Parr by Val Williams (2002) it's been on our shelf since my daughter was doing A level photography and I'm ashamed to say I don't think I've ever opened it ! Also reading The Box of Delights .
Photograph by Martin Parr from Signs of the Times 1992. Image shows a saggy brown sofa with bright cushions and a white lace edged antimacassar
"We keep buying things 'that'll look better and it just doesn't "
#MartinParr by Val Williams, (Phiadon 2002)
I made a booklist on @bookshop-org-uk.bsky.social about some lovely people I've met (many through my job at @samreadbookseller.bsky.social ) and their beautiful books.
I'm not going back to Substack. I will continue to post my newsletters from Ghost. But I did have to get back in there, just to post this and let people who thought I'd vanished know about this utter nightmare: substack.com/home/post/p-...
Popping back for something important…
This is for those of you who knew & loved that golden human, Jamie Normington @movingslowly.bsky.social – and those who never met him but were amused, enlightened, touched by his gift for communication and compassion here and on Twitter.
Like a living anecdote from #Middleland about Cumbrian small business we've been extra busy spinning many plates, so it's taken us longer than planned, but the captioned video of our fantastic event with @rory-stewart.bsky.social and @herdyshepherd.bsky.social is now here to watch.
Squirrel with acorns in the porch at St Kentigern’s Church, Crosthwaite near Keswick in Cumbria.
#Woodensday
Sending strength and solidarity from a fellow migraineur, I hope you feel better soon x
READ the REVIEWS!! 👇
#BestSeller 📚 #Mostgifted 🎁
The new Womensart book
'Reframing Women Printmakers'
also support this account & the promotion of women artists
- so thank you! xx 💕
At a bookshop of your choice....
Today marks 2 years since @likewinterblue.bsky.social and @pollyrowena.bsky.social took the helm of the shop. What a busy 2 years it's been! We're celebrating with our biggest event by a very long way next week, only possible because of our brilliant bookselling team and so much community support.
My book Help The Witch
A synopsis of my book Help The Witch
Plague doctor linoprint by my mum, Jo
To celebrate the rerelease of my short story collection Help The Witch via @swiftpress.bsky.social I’m giving away TWO signed copies each with a beautiful original linoprints by my mum, from the book (now v rare & worth £40).
To enter you just need to repost this and pop a reply below.
I love ours ( photos from recent night out in the mist) but it can be temperamental and we were nervous of using it in the summer, even on lake shore. I have been glad of it during power cuts!
No, it's ok I found them... I just wanted to know who to credit if I share the picture 🙂 ( the window itself is my father's work in collaboration with the National Glass Centre in Sunderland )
This is a great photo of the window, do you know the photographer?
Flaming marshmallow on a stick in front of a moody, misty lake with Canadian canoe.
Two cyanotype prints with embroidered details. An owl with yellow and orange flowers and a portrait of a young woman. In the background the room is dark and lit by a warm glowing light.
My most popular recent Instagram post is this flaming marshmallow on a stick, not the art I spent hours making 😏... still, when seen together like this they do have matching eerie and Autumnal colour schemes.
#NationalDayOnWriting
in Cumbrian dialects, 'hullet' is owl. A bird of magic and wisdom; a symbol of the divine feminine; of the moon; and light in the darkess of night
from: "Folklore of the Lake District"
bardofcumberland.com/folklore/
#folklore #lakedistrict #booksky
📷 unknown